Animal Behavior Thurday-late

Comments about current events (Health care bill) plus links to two re-purposed Christmas Classics are below the Thursday Animal Behavior Feature. The Dems are doing their news dump early.

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Books on Animal Behavior on my stack of books to read:

Alex and Me; How a Scientist and a Parrot Discover a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence–and Formed a deep bond in the process, by Irene M.Pepperberg. Alex was an amazing bird and I’ve seen videos of him working with Dr. Pepperberg. He even spoke with her accent (NYC). Anyone who has a parrot or loves to learn about animals probably knows about Alex.

Animals in Translation; Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior, by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson.

Dogs that Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home; and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals, by Rupert Sheldrake. (There have been video made using two cameras, one on the person and one on the dog — showing that the dog somehow knew that his person was coming home. A Canadian friend told me about the Basenji dog she has years ago that knew when her husband was arriving home. Many people might assume that the dog hears the car and responds. But in one case the wife could not clue the dog about the arrival of the husband because the husband arrived via taxi from the near-by airport. It was a private plane so there was no scheduled arrival time. BUT the dog knew that her master was due to arrive and she did her usual merry dance in front of the door.)

Behavioral Mechanisms in Evolutionary Ecology, Edited by Leslie A. Real. (I bought this book used for a fraction of its new book price. And yes this is an Animal Behavior Geek book.)

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First up there is a short rant about the Health insurance lobbyist written Bill for the Men’s Health care welfare for the insurance companies. A link is embedded to one of the many individuals who has read and can explain what this legislation means for us, the ordinary taxpayers.

Then there are links to a couple of Christmas classics redone for this 0bowma era. Think Grinch and Scrooge — Ba Humbug.

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Democrats play Scrooge ahead of Christmas and stab women and old folks in the back in the process.

There was almost too many reactions to the ba humbug Christmas present from the Democrats — meaning the welfare for the Health care insurance companies. Some of the CEOs of these Insurance welfare divas companies are no doubt thinking of all the millions they will be able to stash away in their off shore bank accounts. They can now hire even more people to figure out how to not pay insurance claims — or pay $1.20 on a $700 bill so they can record the bill as “paid” and not “rejected”.

But the politicians will continue to be pigs (no disrespect to real pigs) and “Survival of the Fittest” will be the new code of the land. It is amazing that some fools are cheering about the dead of night deal of the democrats  — apparently the folks being conned believe the media BS and haven’t bothered to read the small print.

Problem is that both the Senate version and the House version will now need to be merged — in a way that only dumb ass Dems know how to do. Blue Lyon does a great job of translating political double talk to help us understand how bad (or good) this POS bill really is. Apparently not much will happen if some form of a joint Bill is passed — EXCEPT that we all get hit with taxes and will be forced to buy some form of “insurance” or pay a fine (or go to jail — depending on which version of the latest secret backroom bills passes). With no cost controls and a thousand different versions of this mess — probably a whole lot of people will fall through the cracks. But not the CEOs who are probably ordering their new jets to fly them to their new homes somewhere on a tropical island.

Some of the 0bots are not happy — too bad guys and gals. HE is your misfortune and you own this con man, you all have no one to blame except yourselves, now go along home. Some of you have lost your homes and can’t find jobs. Again — this is your problem. You demanded that this inexperienced, unqualified, narcissistic man was the ONE you wanted to replace GWB. Frankly I can’t tell the difference between the two — and apparently the make-up artist took the day off when HE rolled up his sleeve for the swine flu shot. GEE whiz HE has his mother’s white arms — who would have guess that HE is half white? The 0bots can’t pitch a fit about photoshopping, because that photo of HIM getting a flu shot was taken by the White House (government) official photographer.The reason why Not Your Sweetie posted the photo of the ONE is because during the campaign HIS photo was posted which made HIM look — gasp — too dark. The cry in 0bot land went out that the photo was darkened using digital Photoshop software. So what if he has light or dark or GREEN skin.

The blog Cannon Fire has a new Christmas classic posted — How the BRO stole the Country.

And then madamab at the Widdershins has a one-act play — a variation of the Ghosts of Christmas past a.k.a. 0bama carol.

Thankfully HE is going to spend some time in Hawaii — probably working on his tan next to the pool at that $4,000 a day estate. Somehow extravagances like that seems so wrong, when so many people are out of work and the home foreclosure rate is not declining. But then HE keeps on proving that he is a hard-core narcissist, because he has NO empathy with others.