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Open Thread
by John Cole| 57 Comments
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.
The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.
Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll
rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius
Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.
This really is a full service blog.
Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity
They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.
I really should read my own blog.
An almost top 10,000 blog!
Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard
fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)
Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?
In my day, never was longer.
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?
Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.
People are complicated. Love is not.
Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
wasabi gasp
Uhhngg.
SamFromUtah
Well, it beats “Rock On.”
protected static
Fnord.
Dennis - SGMM
Narf!
Incertus
Ever seen a stoned cat?
shera
Just when I thought I couldn’t get any dorkier, I’ve discovered all the episodes of “Firefly” on Hulu.
myiq2xu
Is that like a tight pussy?
Conservatively Liberal
snort
tom.a
Ninkasi! The ancient Sumerian matron goddess of beer. Which I just learned as I’m drinking a Double Red Ale from the Ninkasi brewery in Eugene, OR. A pretty good brew, a bit maltier and heavy than most red ales but my palette isn’t exactly all that sharp, I’ve been drinking for the past 5 hours, woohoo!
Conservatively Liberal
I had a cat that loved to get baked, so much so that if he could get to my stash, he would eat it. The first time, he wasted nearly a quarter (oz) and I came home to a stoned cat who could not coordinate his front and back legs, laying in front of his empty food bowl purring. He was baked for three days.
I should have known trouble was coming when I noticed that a baggie that was in the bottom of the pocket in a down vest had innumerable tiny puncture holes in it (so did the nylon on the vest).
I could sit there and blow smoke (not too dense though) in his face, and he would wrinkle up his nose and then ususally sneeze. But he never got up, and after a few hits he would hop down and head for the food.
Munchies win again! Oh, and his name? Kitty Buds, or Bud for short.
nightjar
I love Serenity, and been wanting to find somewhere to watch the Firefly series. I guess that makes me a dork too.LOL. Anyway, shera, thanks for the tip on Hulu, I didn’t know it existed.
Incertus
They’ve got Tequila and Bonnetti, too.
Cain
Nice CL.. nice.. I haven’t had any of that stuff.. except for some hash about 15 years ago. If I knew how to get some I would. I’m so soooo straght laced now..hehe.
BTW I’ll be canvassing tomorrow for the pony. It’s the first time I’m doing it. It feels kind of wierd to go knocking on democrat doors.. I haven’t done that kind of thing since I was kid selling oranges or candy bars and what not to raise money for band. Invariably, my parents would pay for most of it! haha.
cain
Conservatively Liberal
Medical marijuana keeps me out of trouble now, but going through seventeen operations, endless physical therapy and drugs that would stun an elephant to get it wasn’t much fun.
Though I can legally possess and use it, I get it through a ‘private’ source rather than grow it (yet). They only sell to certificate holders, but they prefer to remain private just to be safe(er).
myiq2xu
Way back in 1977 I knew some stoners that has an Irish Setter that would follow a joint around the room, wanting everyone to blow the smoke in his face.
After a joint or two, he was staggering and knocking stuff over.
Rick Taylor
You can find avi’s of all the Firefly episodes here.
tom.a
The first time, he wasted nearly a quarter (oz) and I came home to a stoned cat who could not coordinate his front and back legs
Holy crap, your cat ate almost an ounce? A fraction of that would impair MY ability to walk! You got one bad ass cat CL.
TheFountainHead
What’s really freaky is that that’s exactly what I did all night too!
Cain
CL, I’m sorry for whatever pain you had to go through that you had to take it as medication rather than for fun. I hope it wasn’t some kind of riding accident.
cain
cbear
Not to make light of CL’s situation, but that “riding accident” excuse has been around ever since Rush Limbaugh was a teenager, and first came home with that spot of blood on the back of his trousers.
It’s only slightly more plausible than the “Swear to God doctor, I didn’t even know my girlfriend owned a gerbil, and I only wish I’d seen him before I sat down on that couch.”
myiq2xu
cbear’s “specialty” is breaking in newbies.
Cain
I guess that depends on where on his trousers that blood was. If it was around the hole in the back of his trousers, it could be a riding accident. Just don’t think whatever he was riding used gasoline.
cain
Johnny Pez
Today’s blogwhore: Top Ten Skeletons in Barack Obama’s Closet.
cbear
myiq sez-
I gotta tell you myiqey old buddy, you’ve been spending waaay too much time with the Pantsuit Brigade, and it’s really thrown you off your game.
Don’t you think it might make just a tad bit more sense to let the girls in the thread get comfortable, you know, maybe let their hair down a little, before you start with the “pussy” comments?
I’m just saying, bro….
cbear
Still bitter about that gerbil-ectomy you had to undergo, eh bud???
If I told you once, I told you a hundred times—for safety’s sake, you have to keep his nails clipped so he can’t grab onto your colon when he’s up there.
Who knew you were such a rookie.
Conservatively Liberal
I meant a quarter ounce! Hell, if the cat was not dead after eating an ounce I would have killed it! ;)
Nope, no riding accident though I did have one of those many moons ago. Workplace injury; I slipped and fell about six feet in a dead fall in the back of a 32 foot twin engined boat under construction. I landed on my mid-back/neck on top of a Volvo-Penta AQ271 exhaust riser. It fucked me up royally, but I did not find out until much later how royally.
I was stupid, ignored the hospitals/doctors advice and went back to work. I was newly married and we had a kid on the way, and I had income to earn. By the time I figured out that I was in trouble, a couple of years passed. My doc had an MRI done, and afterward the tech pulled me aside and said that he was no expert at reading the films, but I was in pretty bad shape.
I had to sue to reopen my injury claim (two suits, two wins and two appeals by the state that they lost before we got the ball rolling on it), and the state insisted that I had carpal tunnel (that their ‘specialists’ confirmed). While my docs said that I had some carpal tunnel problems that showed with electrical testing (EEG), they thought that it was not serious enough to require intervention. They insisted, along with me, that the pain was radiating from my neck down in to my hands, and their ‘experts’ said that it was pain in my hands that was radiating upward.
Needless to say, I have had unnecessary surgery to hop through the hoops the state insurance put in place, and in the end they finally allowed the docs to get in to my neck and fix it. I ended up having C-5 through C-7 fused in my spine (neck), and they had to go back in a third time to screw a new titanium plate in with bigger screws. Seems that I am too active and wore out the original. :)
Still, I have had my left palm opened five times (one time they opened my scalp and left wrist for a Temporalis Fascia Graft, boy was that an experience!) for repairs and cleanup of scar tissue, the right palm has been opened twice, both elbows have had the ulnar nerves transplanted to the insides of my arms (Bilateral Ulnar Neuropathy, one elbow had to be done twice due to nerve branching), Pronator Teres repair on the right forearm, De Quervains compartment release on the left wrist and a few other ‘odds and ends’.
So I now have to take a synthetic opiate (Talwin NX), a prescribed NSAID (Orudis), a muscle relaxer (Skelaxin), an agent for trigeminic neuralgia (Tegretol) and an antihistamine (Vistaril) to inhibit allergic reaction to the Talwin (I am allergic to opiates).
Advice to young workers: If your doc says that you are going to have problems in the future due to a work accident, make sure you have everything detailed. Everything. And get a good workers comp attorney.
So while I can smoke pot legally, getting there was no party. Sorry so long, but if I really detailed the whole thing I could write a novel.
cbear
Wow. If I’d been thru half that shit, I’d be walking around with a permanently-attached IV, full of Dilaudid and Angel Dust.
Rome Again
Well, at least your brain isn’t screwed up. You’re doing better than half the country. :)
Btw CL – OUCH!
libarbarian
Very astute.
Conservatively Liberal
For my fellow Oregonians, how about something funny from Kos regarding the Mannix/Ericson race? The comments are a real ‘snort’. :D
Ouch is right RA. And I am allergic to Dilaudid too cbear…lol! Not so sure about the angel dust though I am in no hurry to find out. ;)
The third operation on the left wrist was the Temporalis Fascia Graft, and there is a funny story behind it. The graft is done by slicing the scalp open from the top of the head to the front tip of the ear (left ear in this case), removing strips of fascia and implanting them in the wrist, wrapping them around the ulnar & median nerves. Now I have hair to my waist, and I was not looking forward to the ‘scalping’ that would take place. The doc told me that the best he could do was to remove about a 1 1/2 inch strip of hair around the incision. I decided that I could hide it with hats, so I told him to do it.
The day of the surgery, I was pretty depressed at the thought of having a racing stripe on the side of my head (on top of the surgeries too). When I came to afterward, the doc said everything went well and I went home later that day. When I looked in the mirror, my head was all bandaged up so little more than my face showed.
I returned to the doc for my post-op three days, and the nurse removed the initial bandaging and the plastic ‘leech’ that drew off accumulated fluids (that f’ing HURT!). When the doc came in, he asked me if I had looked at the incision on my head yet, and I said no. I had carefully felt it, but I could not tell anything as the area was pretty tender and felt all matted down.
He handed me a hand mirror, and I braced myself for a look at the racing stripe. I look. No racing stripe. WTF?! Instead, there were evenly spaced staples that my hair was braided around in neat, tiny rows, right up to the edge of the incision. I looked at the doc, and you could tell he was enjoying the expression on my face.
He told me that since he is a cosmetic surgeon by trade (top notch guy, Mayo Clinic trained and interned, in business for over twenty years at the time), and this is something he does for his female patients (for extra cash, of course) but he did not have the heart to cut my hair.
I could have hugged him to death if given the chance. The wife was privvy to the whole thing too, and she did not say a peep to me about it but laughed her ass of afterward. So did I.
Next I will have to tell you about the time the nurse pulled the plastic leeches off of my elbow and sprayed the accumulated fluid all over herself and the wall. That was a real laugh, not.
Ninerdave
vamping off of CL…
Why we don’t legalize (or at least decriminalize) all drugs is beyond me. Tax it like booze and put the money into rehab. That would kill the illegal drug trade and all the ills that are associated with it (say: murder, shitting up neighborhoods, street gangs, etc, etc, etc)
Oh wait I know why, the alcohol, law enforcement, and prison lobbies would be out of biz!!!
At the same time, CL has to jump though hoops to get his meds and junkies can’t get the treatment they need.
Well hell “War on Drugs” sounds sexy.
D-Chance.
Nothing on Bush’s visit to Saudi Arabia? Where he goes cowboy hat-in-hand… only to be told to go fuck himself by his good buddy, King Abdullah?
This might have been more accurate than first thought…
Dennis - SGMM
The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, passed in 1914 was the feds’ first stab at controlling drugs. That means that we’ve been at it 94 years. While the “War on Drugs” has been a boon to authoritarians and the prison industry it hasn’t done shit to curtail drug use. On the other hand, it has indirectly led to astonishing corruption in Mexico, among other countries, as well as financing drug lords, insurgents and street gangs. Our incarceration rate is the highest in the world (Take that, Third World dictators!) with incarceration for drug-related offenses increasing twelve fold since 1980.
How well is it working? I’m white, sixty and I haven’t had any connections with the underground for decades. Nonetheless, I doubt that it would take me more than a few hours to score drugs.
That no one has actually done a cost/benefit analysis of the “War on Drugs” with an eye towards rationalizing our drug laws is a sign of just how many entities have a financial interest in keeping things just as they are.
AkaDad
Firefly was a really good show. It sucks that they only made 14 episodes.
This remix is teh funny.
bago
Top of the morn. I’m at the point where I stopped programming yesterday. It turns out downloading the free finger eleven concert on xbl is pretty god damned sweet. Their drummer kicks all ass.
shera
My favorite character is Jayne Cobb, and my favorite line’s from him, too: “That’s why I never kiss them on the mouth,” from Our Mrs. Reynolds. Hilarious!
b. hussein canuckistani
Holy crap CL, do ever need a country with health care and a lax attitude to weed. You’re welcome up here of course, but just in case you don’t love hockey and poutine, good luck with the regime change.
daddy4mak
i wonder if huckabee’s “gaffe” was made to take the heat off Bush and his speech at the knesset
Dennis - SGMM
I doubt it. The Republican MO is to have anyone but themselves take one for the team. I’d guess that no attractive white women disappeared so Huckabee got the spotlight. Remember too that the R’s have to save the terrorism alerts for the Democratic convention so they’ll have to ride these things out until then.
Wilfred
Hearts and minds update
‘Detention complex’?
4tehlulz
Fixed
Andrew
Holy Frak. BSG was amazing. John, hurry up and watch it so we can talk about it.
Jake
I hadn’t seen this video of Democrats out of WV. Pretty stunning what some people will say on camera:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-q4MDQ0cDI
Sorry John. Your state is back-asswards.
Bot LaBeer
LOL … Corrente went dark. I guess myiq=0 and all his little butt buddies will be bummin’.
CorrentewireIs404.com
PeterJ
Will they do a Lieberman and blame the problems with their site on Obama supporters?
Conservatively Liberal
I seriously considered moving to Canada many years ago, not to escape the US but because I knew some people who were regulars at a campground/mobile home park I worked at. We had many Canadian visitors (Spokane, Washington), and I partied with a lot of them. Nice people who always have a good sense of humor, and I learned a lot about Canada from them.
I decided that while it sounded good, I hate cold weather (well, freezing weather) so I moved to Oregon. It is the next best thing to Canada, for me anyway! :)
Back on the no topic point of this thread, I read about Hillary’s latest conference call where she tells her supporters that she is in it to the end. She also tells them not to watch tv, but instead read a book or do something else.
I know her demographic is the ‘low information voter’, but why does she have to encourage them to remain low information voters? Is it so they do not have to face the fact that she is losing, and so she can continue to mislead them with her campaign spin?
Is this so that when they find out she lost they can think to themselves ‘Well, she said that she was going to win and she stayed in it to the end, so they must have stolen it from her!’
More than likely.
Oh, and thanks for the good luck wishes on the regime change BHC! We will need all of the luck you can send our way.
Dennis - SGMM
Lamentably, I wouldn’t put it past them. Bushco’s antics have made “No one would be stupid/crazy/evil/duplicitous/arrogant enough to do that,” obsolete for me. Whether out of spite or fear of what a Democratic president would uncover, I’d give better than even odds that Bushco will bomb Iran and leave the results for his successor to deal with.
Notorious P.A.T.
I’m no expert, but if a normal cat can eat a quarter ounce of a substance and not even come close to dying, why should that substance be illegal?
Bob In Pacifica
I thought that during the Dem convention that the Bush Administration would capture the second-in-command of al Qaeda and that Osama bin Laden would issue his video voting guide. You know, “My good friend Barack…” And Reverend Wright will be identified from security footage as having robbed a liquor store. And pictures will show up in News Of The World showing Obama meeting with aliens from outer space.
Liberal Masochist
NPAT – based on his eating habits, I am not sure the cat is normal! Sounds like some big 18 pound tabby supercat to me…
Mary
Oh oh. Ted Kennedy has been rushed to hospital. John King on CNN says that according to his sources, the senator may be showing signs of a stroke.
Brachiator
Most societies have problems with totally allowing pleasure industries. And although I lean towards decriminalizing most drugs, I think that new problems would arise to replace the old ones.
Tobacco companies deal with decreased use in the US by pushing more ciggies in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Just imagine the size of a legitimate drug market, and the impact on marketing drug use to countries that don’t have advanced economies and infrastructures.
And of course the US would become one of the biggest markets for pleasure drugs. I wonder what impact it would have on our trade deficits if limitless amounts of Colombian and Peruvian blow were marketed here. People forget, or don’t know that the 19th century Opium Wars occurred because expanding opium addiction in China was good for the British Empire (Opium Wars):
Imagine Starbucks with heroin and cocaine.
On the other hand, drug dealer type crime would decline as former drug lords could now legally use banks and would not have to rely on armed goons to protect their supply.
But organized crime figures could use the profits from legalized drugs to finance illegal activities such as prostitution, gambling, loan-sharking, extortion, etc. Legalize prostitution, too, you say? OK, but note that illegal prostitution flourishes despite the fact that it is legal in some places, and you have the despicable example of some European men who would rather spend considerable sums of money to travel half-way around the world so that they can exploit Asian women and girls rather than using legal hookers close to home.
And in this corner you have the promise of rehab. But in the other corner you have Amy Winehouse.
In addition, the pressure to shift agricultural land from food to drug production would be enormous, although it might be interesting to see what quality of marijuana could come from legal fields in Hawaii, California and Mexico.
Agreed. I have tremendous sympathies for CL, and hope that a Democratic Administration will have a more rational policy with respect to medical marijuana.
Conservatively Liberal
Because there is no level of toxicity like there is with alcohol? When was the last time you heard of a hippie smoking so much pot that they overdosed? Hell, when was the last time you heard of someone who overdosed on, ahem, ‘enhanced’ brownies?
Yeah, pot is JUST like heroin or cocaine. Right. To our government. But then you have to remember that people once thought the earth was flat (some still do). My, how we have advanced as a civilization over the years. Not.
I have an old early 70’s hippy book called ‘Pot Art’, which is a collection of information from that era relating to pot in the news, government testing done (interesting that it was tested by the US Army on AA’s prior to WWII) and actual reports from it and lots of counterculture info on pot. It is an interesting look at pot from that time in our history.
One AP story in it is about how the Department of Motor Vehicles in Olympia, Washington tested straight, drunk and stoned drivers in the late 60’s. Guess who did the best?
The stoners. The straight ones came in second with the drunks last. Interesting results, eh? :)
Kitty Buds was one big mo-foing orange Maine Coon, at one point weighing in at 16 pounds, but he was a cat with a big frame so he did not look fat. Just huge. I had him from a kitten for almost fourteen years until he passed away, a happy stoner.
Thanks, I hope our government looks at pot itself in a different manner. It is no more addictive than cigarettes, less IMO. If I am out of cigs or pot, guess which one I get first? Cigs, and I can get both with the same ease. If I am out of weed, meh. I deal with it. But cigs? Look out store, I am on my way.
Pot does not have a level of toxicity like alcohol, studies have shown that it is nominally addictive, and there are tons of legal uses of hemp products that could be made and sold, helping our economy with jobs and an exportable (non-consumable) commodities like hemp oil (for fuel, lubricants and paints/varnishes), fertilizer, clothing and more.
Our jails are full of people who have been busted for pot related offenses. Some time I ought to tell you about my bust back in the 80’s and what the experience was like. The stupidity behind all of it would have made for a lousy anti-drug commercial, but it would have made a great comedy
act.
I ought to scan that Pot Art book into a .pdf and post it somewhere for people to look at. It is pretty interesting to read, and I have never seen anything like it online. But then the government probably wouldn’t like that. It also has instructions on how the government scientists isolated the components of pot, name cannabinol.
Conservatively Liberal
To finish that last line (hit the mouse on the laptop by accident!):
… isolated the components of pot, namely cannabinol.
Carry on. :)
dj spellchecka
Ninerdave Says: “vamping off of CL…
Why we don’t legalize (or at least decriminalize) all drugs is beyond me. Tax it like booze and put the money into rehab. That would kill the illegal drug trade and all the ills that are associated with it”
the problem is that the government would have to give up the “War on Blacks” aka the “War on Drugs” and the gop wouldn’t sit still for that……
Brachiator
There was a great study a few years ago that looked at various drugs from a number of factors (intoxication, tolerance, withdrawal, etc.) instead of the typically hysterical “bad for you.” Of course, this type of research has been consistently ignored by government and law enforcement. And oddly enough, marijuana is low on the list of almost all “bad effects ind”ices, while alcohol is a mixed bag (high rank for Intoxication, relative low ranking for Dependence).
A couple of good links to these articles can be found here (drug rankings) or here (drugs ranked by harmfulness)
And even if you look at it more starkly, as in this 2006 UK article considering deaths per number of users, marijuana is just not that dangerous (Drugs: the real deal).
Conservatively Liberal
Thanks for the stats, I have never seen those before. I wonder how 16 people died in the UK from pot? Did they munch out too enthusiastically and choke to death on a Jaffa Cake?
And hallucinating from pot? Now that would be something. I have smoked just about every variety out there and I have never even come close to hallucinating. Hell, we used to have what we called ‘bongathons’ where a bunch of us would get together and each toss an eighth on the table in a ‘pot’, and we would pass a bong around until people would drop out. Last one standing (well, sitting) gets the ‘pot’.
It led to some spirited matchups, and I won more than my fair share of them. But nobody hallucinated. Same with the ‘Hash Wars’ (themed off of Star Wars) we used to have. Pin it, knife it or however you cook it, bricks of hash would go up in smoke and still no hallucination.
Now I can believe that a new smoker may think they are hallucinating (think of that cop and his wife who recently called 911 because they thought they were dying from eating brownies loaded with weed), but after getting stoned a couple of times that wears off pretty fast. When I first started smoking cigarettes, I would get all dizzy and lightheaded. That too wore off real fast.
Interesting comparison with the attributed pot deaths versus the tobacco deaths: 16 versus 114,000
But you can buy cigarettes legally. Pot deaths even pale against the alcohol deaths: 16 versus 22,000
But stay away from pot! It is a ‘gateway’ drug that leads to other drugs. Sure. Right. As someone once said, ‘Breast milk can lead to heroin addiction’. Hell, breathing can lead to drug abuse. Stop breathing and you are guaranteed that you will never abuse drugs. Now that is a solution!