Happy Mardi GrasLoki lies in my arms, wrapped in a towel, purring in halting starts and stops. The growing masses in his brain that affect his ability to walk and see also impair his vocal chords. The purr is no longer steady but sporadic.
Still, our neurologically-impaired kitten seems at peace as he lies in my arms. The towel calms him down and also protects my lap from his occasional loss of bladder control.
He looks at me through eyes that may or may not see clearly. We don’t know. Cats can’t talk. With our pets, we depend on signals that are familiar – the swish of a tail, a particular expression or a change in tone of a meow or growl.
But Loki is mostly silent and impaired motor control functions rob him of the ability to communicate through physical movement. When he tries to walk he falls – a lot. He stumbles over his own feet. He tries to raise his head and falls over backwards, lying on the floor, twitching but not making a sound.
I wonder: Is he in pain? Do the falls hurt him? Sometimes his head strikes the leg of the coffee table or the wall. Does not inflict more damage on his already-fragile brain?
We don’t know. Neither do vets from Floyd to Virginia Tech. After many tests, all they can tell us is that they don’t think he is in pain. They say there is nothing they can do to help him and his future rests with us. So we love him and watch after him. He has trouble swallowing so Amy feeds him diluted wet foot that he laps off a tongue depressor. If he tries to eat himself he falls headfirst into the food and then shows what we think are signs of anger with having a face covered with what he should be eating.
He stirs slightly and stretches out a front leg, pressing his paw against my chin. His eyes are open but I don’t know if he can see or even comprehend who or what I am.
Is he happy? Does he know that we will love and care for him for whatever time he has left on this earth?
I don’t know and not knowing breaks my heart.
I made mention
the other day
, in a piece denouncing the fact that poor people in economically depressed Southwest Virginia are forced to pay for Metro, the publically funded commuter system up in fabulously wealthy Northern Virginia, that the only mass transit system in all of Southwest Virginia involves U-Haul rentals to take displaced workers north to find a new job.
Meathead EconomicsSound familiar? High taxes are driving away employers.
It takes hard work to drive anyone away from California's sunshine and scenic vistas, but politicians in Sacramento have been up to the task.
The latest Census Bureau data indicate that, in 2005, 239,416 more native-born Americans left the state than moved in. California is also on pace to lose domestic population (not counting immigrants) this year. The outmigration is such that the cost to rent a U-Haul trailer to move from Los Angeles to Boise, Idaho, is $2,090 -- or some eight times more than the cost of moving in the opposite direction.
What's gone wrong? A big part of the story is a tax and regulatory culture that treats the most productive businesses and workers as if they were ATM machines. The cost to businesses of complying with California's rules, regulations and paperwork is more than twice as high as in other Western states.
But the worst growth killer may well be California's tax system. The business tax rate of 8.8% is the highest in the West, and its steeply "progressive" personal income tax has an effective top marginal rate of 10.3%, or second highest in the nation. ( link requires subscription)
The much talked about poll showing Bush at 35% and Cheney at 18% could be hog wash. ABP has this saying the internals show the sampling rate was
37% Democrats / 34% Independents / 27% Republicans (the unweighted sample is 40D/34I/26R). Keep in mind that in 2004 voters were 37% Democrat and 37% Republican.
That makes sense to me. The Blog From On High has the story on another goofy poll here.
I think this is good news for the state. Cable competition could help people like me who pay a outrages price for cable tv and broadband. A the RTD has this and here is a wire from Robert W. Woltz Jr., president of Verizon Virginia. Del Terry Kilgore is mentioned as working hard on this bill. It is on Kaines desk and we shall see if he signs it into law.
I just got an email, obviously inspired by Jen’s yesterday, in regard to Gov. Kaine’s transportation plan and asks that I post it. I figured what the heck. 
We need your help! As you may know, there hasn’t been a significant investment in Prince William County’s transportation network in 20 years. Our state deserves a safe, well-maintained, and well-planned transportation network that addresses our needs. We cannot wait to address our transportation problems. Gov. Kaine is willing to make the tough decisions and he has a plan that will help. Now we just have to encourage the Virginia General Assembly to act.
Below, I’ve pasted information about contacting your legislator, Del. Michele McQuigg. Please take two minutes to place a phone call, send an email, or write a letter in support of Gov. Kaine’s plan.
——————————
DEL. MICHELE MCQUIGG’S CONTACT INFORMATION
In Richmond
General Assembly Building
P.O. Box 406
Richmond, Virginia 23218
Phone: (804) 698-1051
Fax: (804) 786-6310
Constituent Viewpoint: (800)-889-0229
Email: DelMMcQuigg@house.state.va.usIn PWC
P.O. Box 8
Occoquan, VA 22125
Phone: (703) 491-9870
——————————Let Del. McQuigg know how important it is that this issue be addressed now. We’ve waited long enough and we need good roads for our school buses and first responder vehicles; we need reliable mass transit systems to relieve congestion on our roads and help working families get to and from their jobs.
Please do this as soon as you can. When you do, please send an email to shanon.henry2@gmail.com and let me know you’ve done so. This enables us to keep track so if Del. McQuigg tries to say she has not been contacted, we can pull out our list of people and verify that we have contacted her.
I hope each and every one one of you will take action. Together, we can move our state’s transportation system into the 21st century.
Thanks,
Shanon Henry
shanon.henry2@gmail.com
Do we have leaders like this in every region/county/city that are willing to coordinate and/or already coordinating a massive “call your delegate” campaign? If not, we need to get something started.
Feds demand Mich. voter roll cleanupMichigan has more people registered to vote statewide than people of voting age. That certainly gives me confidence in the system. You?
Secretary of State Land is criticized for having more people registered than are eligible to vote.
Lisa M. Collins, The Detroit News
The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Monday it is monitoring Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land's office after determining that Michigan has more people registered to vote statewide than people of voting age. ( link )
Americans Are Cautiously Open to Gas Tax Rise, Poll ShowsAmericans would be willing to pay 2 cents a gallon to save the planet. I'm shocked.
By Louis Uchitelle and Megan Thee
Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to a higher federal gasoline tax, but a significant number would go along with an increase if it reduced global warming or made the United States less dependent on foreign oil, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. ( link )
WHEN 'SCIENCE' PLAYS POLITICSSo what is to be made of all this global warming talk? We'll never know. The "scientists" we've relied on for the research and analysis have proven themselves to be more untrustworthy than the politicians with whom they conspire.
Last September, after Hurricane Katrina, activists in lab coats saw a grand opportunity to tie the exceptionally violent hurricane season to global warming. A study in Science declared, "A large increase was seen in the number and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5."
But the researchers simply cut off their data at 1970, though public statistics go back to 1850. Using the full data set would have reversed the conclusion. Why did the editors and peer-reviewers at both JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] and Science not insist on use of the full data set? Because slicing off inconvenient data is a time-honored tool of advocacy science.
Editors can even ignore papers in their own publication if it serves their purpose. A report in a recent (Feb. 17) issue of Science uses a computer model to show that glaciers along the coast of Greenland are rapidly melting and leading to rapid sea level rise; the study (naturally) blames global warming. Yet, just three months earlier, Science published a study based on actual data that showed increasing snowfall in Greenland was leading to greater ice accumulations than previously measured, slowing Greenland's contribution to sea-level rise.
When there's a political cause, such oversights come easy. ( link )