what I'm about to state is obvious, but I'll do it anyway. Per Wikipedia,

Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to diverge from the normative gender roles.

And (citing Union Students' in Ireland LGBT's Transgender Campaign), that they are

"people who were assigned a sex, usually at birth and based on their genitals, but who feel that this is a false or incomplete description of themselves,"

I find it not a little remarkable that so many don't see this, not solely as a sexual issue but, more comprehensively, as a natural and welcome human need to expand one's sense of self.

That, among other things, is a function of literature. I was reading earlier today an assessment of Hector's relationship with his wife, Andromache, in The Iliad, and the author noted that, in the passage related to Hector's last moments with her,

(she) is bound to Hector not merely by the dutiful bond one might expect in a time of arranged marriages. There is more than duty here, so much so that it is not too much to call it romantic love, a phenomenon commonly thought to have entered human relationships only with the arrival nineteen centuries later of the Courtly Love tradition.

So here we have a literary example (and I've no doubt such relationships have always existed, even though they night not have been the norm) of psychosocial human development that might very probably have struck Hector's contemporaries as utterly bizarre.

Long story short, I muse about human development and the relative slowness of it (although I am impatient by nature) and I believe this is what generates so much in the way of bad mojo from those on the Right. There is a consistent refusal to embrace willingly that natural desire to grow as a species, even as they fail to recognize that they, too, are the outcome of earlier expressions of growth by their forebears (as in the Victorian belief that children were merely small adults; they essentially rejected what we today take for granted--we let our children be children and we proudly mark their passage through stages of development).

Well, a lot of rambling there but I've been pondering it even as I keep a weather eye on my cats.

Cats are just like that. They're afraid and wary of weirdos.

Ah, but I think this is so. Their responsiveness (or lackthereof) seems to be situational. If they're laying on the stairs, all is cool and they let me stroke them, they'll purr, etc.

But off those stairs, well, apparently Jack the Ripper has come to call.

And to think I'm the guy tasked daily with the Changing-of-the-Cat-Box (which I do while wearing a Bearskin Shako and muttering about the injustice of Britain's lost Empire--which, when I think about it, is probably why these kittens stare at me the way they do).

this statement

"PWC is a world class firm," Ignagni told reporters. "They have a stellar reputation and they have proceeded to do this analysis in a thorough and comprehensive way."

So let's see; we have "world class," as in the reach of this highly-skilled propagandizing firm; of course their reputation is "stellar" since they represent multinationals; and their gift for "analysis" was undoubtedly learned by the company's founder at the knee of George Orwell.

And all the while that grinning ninny Baucus pretends to "chair" the Senate Finance Committee, as if he and his fellow clods are actually generating legislation rather than promoting the day's memo from the likes of PWC.

on the cat thing. I probably mentioned that I adopted two brother kittens back in May.

Well, the 17-year-old cat that passed on was a great lover, always on my belly as I lay on the sofa reading or numbing the brain with a little telly; slept with me every night; always around just for company.

But I've come to think that having one cat generates more responsiveness from him/her than having more than one--then they have each other.

As rrrheard notes

Most of the time they just sit around and do nothing until it's time to feed them.

Exactly like Congress.

And these two, now 5 months old, play with each other constantly, yet run from me as if I were an axe-murderer. They stare at me as if they've either never seen me before or wonder what harm I'm about to do them. Then they'll jump up onto the bay window ledge and stare at me with their yellowish-green eyes, contemplatively, as if considering whether or not they can take me, pondering just how much of a threat I am.

That's also like Congress (except for the bay window part) which might explain, in part, the Emanuels' and Harwoods' of the world.