born live love die

Hugh Laurie puts paid on it.

Al Franken, who wrote, “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot” is going to be a Senator.  Here he is.

When I was a kid, the local shopping chain store, Meijer Thrifty Acres, sold pets.  Lots of them.  They sold kittens and puppies.  They even sold monkeys.  I was thinking about the monkeys while reading “The Hot Zone” a few months ago.  I wonder who ran that department and what stories they have to tell.  When exasperated, some species of monkey are known throws balls of fecal material.  I wonder if the department manager would have stories about that.

The number of species being used for assistance has increased.   This article is a good review of the issue.  The author is sympathetic to the people who rely on the various animals for assistance; this is the last paragraph.

“Many people try to make this issue black and white — this service animal is good; that one is bad — but that’s not possible, because disability extends through an enormous realm of human behavior and anatomy and human condition,” Frieden told me. In the end, according to him, the important thing to remember is this: “The public used to be put off by the very sight of a person with a disability. That state of mind delayed productivity and caused irreparable harm to many people for decades. We’ve now said, by law, that regardless of their disability, people must have equal opportunity, and we can’t discriminate. In order to seek the opportunities and benefits they have as citizens, if a person needs a cane, they should be able to use one. If they need a wheelchair, a dog, a miniature horse or any other device or animal, society has to accept that, because those things are, in fact, part of that person.”

The obvious rejoinder is that while the affliction or disability may be part of the person, the animal being used for assistance is not.  To assert that somehow the animal is also some part of the person is juvenile.  This article discusses public policy and is made less by the inclusion of arguments, such as the one above, which have been fabricated and are easily rebutted.  Axiomatic arguments need not be accepted in the whole.  I don’t accept that argument above.

If a person needs an assistance animal, then public policy should identify the condition requiring assistance, the animals that can help with that condition, the means by which those animals can be used and limits on their use.  In short, public policy should work out the questions of rights and responsibilities for the people seeking assistance, the animals being used and the rest of us.

One of the people who needed assistance is Jim Eggers.

A few months ago, in a cafe in St. Louis, I met a man named Jim Eggers, who uses an assistance parrot, Sadie, to help control his psychotic tendencies. Eggers looks like a man who has been fighting his whole life. He is muscular, with a buzz cut, several knocked-out teeth and many scars, including one that runs ear-to-chin from surgery to repair a broken jaw. Eggers avoids eye contact in public — he walks fast down streets and through stores staring at the ground, jaw clenched. “I have bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies,” he told me as he sucked down a green-apple smoothie. “Homicidal feelings too.”

This is a thorny problem and it will be about a century before we have a better understanding of mental health.  We have a difficult time coming to agreement on what is pathological about mental conditions.  We understand that neurotransmitters control some emotions, but we can’t measure them directly and resort to wholesale frobbing of neurotransmitter levels in subjects.  The drugs we used to frob those neurotransmitter levels don’t work the same in all people and efficacy changes in individual subjects over time.  Drug regimen for mental health is like learning to crack walnuts with a sledgehammer and then having the sledge turn into an axe or monkey wrench.  It is good that Mr. Eggers knows that he has homicidal feelings.  And letting him carry a parrot around is preferable to some form of incarceration.

But can we make sure, as a matter of public policy, that any public risks associated with birds are mitigated?  Some of the subjects of the story seem reluctant to allow any public interest in their situation.  These subjects, like Debby Rose, seem to reject all interference in their lives.

On a rainy day in November, I walked through a T. J. Maxx store in Springfield, Mo., with Debby Rose and Richard, her 25-pound bonnet macaque monkey — one of the most controversial service animals working today. Rose was wearing brown pants and a brown-and-gold-patterned shirt. Richard was wearing a brown long-sleeved polo over a white T-shirt with jeans and a tan vest that said “Please Don’t Pet Me I’m Working.” Richard stood in the child seat of Rose’s shopping cart, facing forward, bouncing up and down, smacking his lips and grinning as Rose pushed him down the aisles.

Richard is a hands-on shopper. If Rose pointed at a sweater or purse she liked, or a pair of shoes, his hand darted out to touch them. As we passed a pair of tan, fuzzy winter boots that Rose particularly liked, Richard leaned out of the cart and quickly licked one on its toe.

People stared as we walked. “Why do you have him?” they’d ask.

“He’s a service animal trained for my disability, kind of like a seizure-alert dog,” Rose told them, again and again.

“Can I pet him?”

“He doesn’t like to be touched,” she’d say, “but you can give him five.”

People raised their hands, and Richard gave them five.

That Rose isn’t bothered by people looking and asking questions is impressive, considering that she has agoraphobia and severe anxiety disorder with debilitating panic attacks. Until getting Richard four years ago, she required heavy doses of anti-anxiety drugs just to go out in public. “I couldn’t have come in this store before Richard, let alone handled all these people talking to me,” she said. “Now I like it.”

Rights and responsibilities: what are the rights and responsibilities of Ms. Rose?  What are the rights and responsibilities of the other shoppers?

Ms. Rose had some issues with other people and there were lawsuits.  Read the whole article to get the story.  But only once in the article is the issue of instinctive behavior addressed.  In many cases, subjects of the article anthropomophize their assistant species.  Public policy should address known animal instinctive behaviors and investigate instinctive behavior in what are essentially artificial environments.

In October, a man in Portland, Ore., took his dog on a bus, claiming that it was a service animal. While getting off the bus, the dog killed another dog that was riding as a “comfort animal.” (In Portland, comfort animals are allowed on public transportation.)

What if a service animal, say a primate or other animal with good digital dexterity, opened the bird cage being carried by Mr. Eggers and freed or injured his parrot?  He admits to homocidal urges.  Is he liable if he gives in to them?

This is an interesting area for public policy discussion.  This article does not approach the issue in terms of rights and responsibilities but in terms of emotion does the issue a disservice.

With regard to the diddling of Rahm and Harry Reid, Jane tells it like it is.

As Howie notes, Duckworth ultimately lost the seat to her Republican opponent despite a huge cash advantage courtesy of the DCCC largely because people didn’t like the fact that she was from out of the district. As Nate says, “The fact of the matter is that Illinoisans have gotten to see an awful lot of Tammy Duckworth, and they simply don’t like her all that much.”

Tammy Duckworth is a vet who lost her legs in a helicopter crash.  Being wounded in service speaks to one’s willingness to serve, but it doesn’t mean that the person is a credible candidate or would be a credible representative in Congress.

Reid and Rahm set her up and she didn’t deliver.  Can we have someone else please?

If I were an Iraqi, I would learn English, find a way to come to America and kill as many people as I could.

If I were an Iraqi.

I’m not, but if any one of those guys does it, I know where they are coming from.  The official death toll for Iraqi civilians is somewhere around 100,000.  The unofficial death toll is between 200,000 and 500,000.  There is a problem with record keeping in Iraq, so the real number is not known.

Saddam killed many Iraqis, but not as many as were killed by all means in the carnage that followed the US invasion.

We bear some responsiblity for that.  We, the people of the United States, are responsible for some of that killing.  It was clear that Saddam was a bad guy, but Iraq wasn’t a failed state.  We did that.

This isn’t the responsibility of just the Republicans or just those people who voted for George Bush.  It is the responsibility of all of us.  We did this.  We, the people, did this

I hope that there aren’t Iraqis so hatefilled that they do what I proposed in my opening sentence.  I hope they realize that some of us were opposed to the Iraqi invasion.

If they don’t do anything like that, but instead forgive us our trespasses, we should recognize that grace and be generous with our time and resources.  There are Iraqis who never did anything against the US but have paid a terrible price for our global swashbuckling.

We owe them.

The ‘net has been rife with stories about how Democrats are thinking about not seating Roland Burris as a Senator from Illinois.  BTD is moronic as always.  Here’s more morony from a Kos front pager.  Rod Blogobitch is trying to screw over the Democrats because he is a punk.  But the law is the law and Burris should be seated.

Roland Burris will never be elected to that seat.  His past has enough closeted skeletons;  when it comes time for opposition research by his opponents, they will have an embarrassment of riches.

Knowing that Burris will never be elected to that seat, the Democratic leadership wants the appointment to go to someone who will have a chance to defend the seat in the next election.  I don’t know enough about Illinois politics to know the players, but the people who have come forward have not been awe inspiring.  There are some who seem to think that since a black guy was elected to that seat, the replacement should be a black guy.  This logic worked for the Republicans when Bush, pere, put Clarence Thomas in the Supreme Court seat once held by Thurgood Marshall.  It’s stupid logic.

The Democrats should tell Roland Burris that they don’t think he can hold the seat, that they will back the best candidate who comes forward in 2010 and he should be thankful he gets to have the seat until then.

Democrats should not attempt any legal shenanigans to keep Burris out of the Senate.  Burris should be seated.

Donald Westlake has died.

Prolific mystery writer Donald Westlake has died at the age of 75.

Westlake’s wife, Abigail, tells The New York Times the author collapsed as he headed to a New Year’s Eve dinner while on vacation in Mexico. His wife says he apparently had a heart attack.

Westlake is considered one of the most successful mystery writers in the United States. He won three Edgar Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award for screenplay writing for “The Grifters.”

Westlake wrote more than 100 books. He used his own name and several pseudonyms, including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West.

Westlake continued to write. His next novel, “Get Real,” is scheduled to be released in April 2009.

Donald Westlake broke into the big time with his novels about the big score.  “Hot Rock” brought us the Dortmunder gang.  I loved his crime novels, although they had dropped in quality in later years.  His short story, “The Curious Events Preceding My Execution” was priceless.

There is chutzpah, and there is this.

Late on Christmas Eve, one last wish was sent, by e-mail: Please let NASA Administrator Michael Griffin keep his job. It was from his wife.

Rebecca Griffin, who works in marketing, sent her message with the subject line “Campaign for Mike” to friends and family. It asked them to sign an online petition to President-elect Barack Obama “to consider keeping Mike Griffin on as NASA Administrator.”

She wrote, “Yes, once again I am embarrassing my husband by reaching out to our friends and ‘imposing’ on them…. And if this is inappropriate, I’m sorry.”

Inappropriate?  You think?

This is the same Michael Griffin who had a collection of his speeches published as in book form.  Vanity, thy name is Mike.

Griffin last made the wires when Barack Obama’s transition team, in the person of Lori Garver, a former NASA assistant administrator, wanted information from NASA contractors.

Soon after, Garver and Griffin engaged in what witnesses said was an animated conversation. Some overheard parts of it.

“Mike, I don’t understand what the problem is. We are just trying to look under the hood,” Garver said.

“If you are looking under the hood, then you are calling me a liar,” Griffin replied. “Because it means you don’t trust what I say is under the hood.”

Well, now that you mention it, we don’t trust you.   It isn’t your personal plaything, Mike.  It is the property of the people of America, not your vanity project.

Thank you John McCain for bringing the Palins into the spot light.  They have been a never ending source of humor.  Got drugs?  It’s all in the family.    I am not a drop out.  I’m taking correspondence classes.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says her future son-in-law is not a high school dropout as the press is reporting.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate told The Associated Press on Wednesday that 18-year-old Levi Johnston is enrolled in high school through a correspondence program.

I guess she thinks that not going to school, but taking classes by mail is not dropping out.

Love it.

Bush is double dog daring Democrats.  The Bush sycophants are pushing the meme that he will be well remembered.  To that end, Bush will not issue blanket pardons for the people that worked for him.  He is daring the Democrats to investigate the egregious lawbreaking that happened in the White House.

They should take his dare.