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No one could have predicted…

Second rate reporter says what?

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

In my day, never was longer.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

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I had this really weird dream last night that I was hanging out with Patton Oswalt and David Cross and Oswalt told Cross to “STFU while the candles are burning or there will be no fun.” Later on I had a dream that I went back into the Army to my old unit and realized I hated all the people I thought I liked.

I have no idea wtf that meant, but thought this was a good time to share it.

Reader Interactions

147Comments

  1. 1.

    Freddie deBoer

    I have a recurring one where I have to kill bad guys by dropping hammers from a really high scaffolding, but then I have to sneak down to retrieve the hammers and when I am down there collecting them I am in sheer terror.

  2. 2.

    cincyanon

    I sometimes dream that I have a warm glow of love for everybody and it’s so discombobulating that I wake up in a panic and have to turn on a news channel to bring myself back around.
    Then, when I go back to sleep, I’m back to being late for a lecture and Audrey Hepburn is rushing to get there too.

  3. 3.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Freddie deBoer: That one is about m_c. I think that is pretty clear.[FN1]

    [FN1] It should be noted that I was able to come to this conclusion with absolutely no formal training in psychology. Fucking amazing, isn’t it?

  4. 4.

    cathyx

    What I understand about dream interpretation is that most things in the dream are representative of something that is significant to you. Such as going back to your army unit would represent going back to your old self and you don’t like what you see. I would interpret that as how your politics have changed since that time and you don’t have the same views anymore.

  6. 6.

    JC

    It doesn’t seem to get through in this environment, but really, the Afghanistan conflict is now in it’s 11th year, and deaths have gone up every year (except one year that was level.)

    We keep doing the same thing, again and again, and yet, nearly 11 years later, the human price keeps going up.

    There is now averaging half of the deaths, of what the worst average death rate years were in Iraq.

    Does anyone else find this unacceptable?

  7. 7.

    Martin

    I never remember any of my dreams. I guess nothing is significant to me, or maybe I’m just a robot or zombie or something and don’t realize it.

  9. 9.

    Cat Lady

    I’ve been having dreams where I know I’m dreaming, and then start playing around with that in the dream- very Carlos Castaneda. Then I wake up and wonder what the hell happened with the pillows and covers and why the cat won’t come to me.

  11. 11.

    cathyx

    I had a dream that I was eating a giant marshmallow, and when I woke up, my pillow was gone.

  13. 13.

    soonergrunt

    Judge strikes down key parts of Texas abortion sonogram law

    AUSTIN, Texas — A federal judge on Tuesday struck down key provision of Texas’ new law requiring a doctor to perform a sonogram before an abortion, ruling that the measure violates the free speech rights of both doctors and patients.
    …
    U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said in his ruling that requiring a doctor to show women images from the sonogram and the sounds of the fetal heartbeat violates the First Amendment rights of doctors.
    The ruling also struck down a requirement that allows women to avoid seeing the sonogram images only if they sign a statement that they are pregnant because of sexual assault or incest. The state cannot compel a woman to disclose such private information that she may not even wish to tell police, Sparks ruled.
    …
    Sparks ruled such disclosure is an attempt by the state to “permanently brand women who choose to get an abortion.”

  14. 14.

    General Stuck

    I am having daymares from trying to pass a goddam kidney stone, and doing it without going to the ER, which I hate doing with a passion. In between periods where the little jaggety fucker is inching toward my pecker and freedom, its drinking one glass of water after another, to where my eyeballs are starting to bob up and down. And when it moves, each time feels like a rusty dagger thrust into my hip and lower back.

    All with only 800 mg Ibuprofen and occasional screams into the wilderness. Maybe tonight will be the night though, to birth a rock.

  15. 15.

    JPL

    I can relate. People who I thought were concerned about policies are in fact only concerned about politics and there is a big difference. BTW I believe in science and evolution and global warming and think coal dust is harmful so there………. Pollution creates jobs for the health industry.

  16. 16.

    soonergrunt

    My comment in moderation is that a Federal Judge in Austin, Texas has ruled that Texas’ law requiring sonograms prior to abortions is a violation of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution. Specifically it violates the rights of both the doctor and the patient.
    Does anyone here know the general leaning direction of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals? Is it likely that this ruling will stand or fall on appeal?

  17. 17.

    RossInDetroit

    I haven’t had more than a half dozen memorable dreams in the last decade. I used to dream in Hyper-real 3D Technicolor for a while. But that was the Pr**ac. I don’t miss the other side effects either.

    Last year I did dream that I stole an airplane and flew it around. I only figured out later that it was a dream. When I woke up from it, it actually felt like and old memory and I believed for a while that it had happened.

  19. 19.

    Keith G

    Some dreams are just clip shows of “word games”, associations, and random events – a mind just goofing off.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @arguingwithsignposts: Actually, I am expecting a phone call from my mother any minute now. She had hip replacement surgery yesterday and I gave her a call when I got home from work, but her sister was just arriving to visit, so she said she would call back later. As a result, I anticipate not being around when the infestation occurs. BTW mom’s surgery went very well and the docs are saying that everything is going as expected and according to plan. So that is good.

  24. 24.

    RossInDetroit

    For the first 15 years after I quit waiting tables all of my nightmares were of Saturday nights and the kitchen doors all opened the wrong way or variations on that. I still occasionally have one when I’m stressed out. Probably will until the day I die.

  26. 26.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @cathyx: I frequently dream about being back in the Navy, right down to figuring out if my uniform still fits, and I remember my RWNJ thoughts at that time, and thinking “I was that much of an idiot?” no doubt John is having the same flashbacks.

  27. 27.

    Southern Beale

    If anyone wants to take a break from politics I’ve posted some more pics from our travels …..

    I’ve had some really weird dreams the last few nights too. I dreamt I bought a friend’s condo in Captiva and she had rented it out to some woman who had turned it into a hair salon and I took great pleasure in kicking her out.

    Very strange. Also, I had a dream about Drew Barrymore. I don’t know why but I often dream about celebrities.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @soonergrunt: 11 of the 16 sitting judges were appointed by Republicans, six of those by W. It is not judicially progressive. That does not mean that the case will be overturned automatically.

  31. 31.

    lamh32

    I once had a dream that me and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson were getting married. I dreamed about the dress, the walk down the aisle, the ceremony, the kiss, the signing of the marriage license, the intro as Mr and Mrs Johnson, the reception, the final garter toss, the bouquet toss, the drive to the hotel, the beautiful honeymoon suite, as the little “trashy romance” stuff was just about to begin…my damn alarm went off!!!

    The best dream ever…dissipates.

    The irony is that alarm went off 1 hour earlier because I forget to set it for daylight’s savings time.

    Ruined my whole damn day! Fuckin’ dreams…who needs em!

  32. 32.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Shit, my whole time in the Army, I was teased mercilessly for being a kneejerk liberal.

    ETA: @General Stuck: Best of luck with all that. I second the booze as diuretic advice, but I also have no formal medical training.

  34. 34.

    PurpleGirl

    jeffreyw: Your food prOn has finally gotten to me. This evening I made a taco caserole (Mexican lasagna?) for dinner. No pictures cause I hadn’t planned on it and made it using whatever I had in the house. But it’s good, flavorful. (Tortilla chips, taco spiced meat — tomato sauce, taco spice mix, Monterey jack cheese, store bought salsa; layered and then baked.

  35. 35.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Cat Lady:

    I read a book many moons ago which I believe was called “controlling your dreams” (back during my Glastonbury, runes, etc, phase) and actually learned how to control my dreams. The trigger is knowing that you cannot adjust the light in your dreams. In other words you are looking at a door where the light is shining under it yet when you open the door the light is no different, or you flip on the light switch and nothing happens. At that point you KNOW that you are dreaming, and you can do what the hell you want, I usually choose to go flying, cause it is wonderful, throw yourself out of the window and just go soaring above the ground. It is utterly incredible.

  38. 38.

    Violet

    @Litlebritdifrnt:
    An old boyfriend of mine was into that controlling your dreams thing! He had a book on it — must have been the same book. I don’t dream all that much (that I know of) so I never bothered to read it.

  39. 39.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Litlebritdifrnt: I see problems stemming from this if, for example, one is trying to figure this out during a power outage. Hallucinogens would also add difficulties.

  41. 41.

    Derf

    I had this bizarre dream that Captain Doom John Galt Cole was actually right about something for a change. It was creepy.

    Thanks for the low hanging fruit Cole. You make it too easy.

  42. 42.

    Cat Lady

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Good to know. The last time, the trigger in my dream was I was talking to a childhood friend who died a few years ago, who didn’t know she was dead, but I did, and then I knew I was dreaming and I knew I could do anything. It felt amazing.

    ETA: And then I woke up and there was Derf. FAIL.

  43. 43.

    Comrade Mary

    @lamh32: A co-worker of mine is casual friends with Dwayne and says that he’s a genuinely nice guy. Just in case you wondered about the quality of the men you dream about.

  44. 44.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @JPL: Fine. There is tree/limb debris like you would not believe, stuff all over the place, Bradford Pear trees just split in two all over town (Bradford Pear Trees are planted in memoriam for every Marine that was ever killed in action so we have a lot of them) power lines still down, roads washed away. Other than that we are fine.

  45. 45.

    Will Reks

    @Omnes Omnibus: Not sure when you were in but I came off of active duty recently. I was involved in a ftx once where setting up communications involved giving the CO access to Fox News. Not to mention that it was on every damned tv in the DFAC during lunch.

  46. 46.

    lamh32

    @Comrade Mary: I follow him on twitter and I know u can’t really tell anything real about someone from his twitter, but if he writes his own stuff, which I’ve heard he does, he seems pretty nice and pretty funny.

    And with all you hear about celebrity divas male and female, I haven’t heard about any diva-like antics from him.

    Plus…he’s hot…IMHO!

  47. 47.

    lamh32

    Question, does anyone here watch “Drop Dead Diva”? I really like this show, wasn’t sure if I would in the beginning, but it is really good, IMHO.

    If anyone does watch it, what do ya’ll think of “Deb’s” new love interest and what about Stacy “cheating” on Fred?

    If no one watches it, please ignore the ranting of a crazed TV fanatic…lol.

  48. 48.

    JPL

    @Litlebritdifrnt: As you know Bradford Pears are beautiful but have weak trunks. When I adopted my mutt almost ten years ago, she would hoard the seeds just in case she might be homeless again.

  49. 49.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Will Reks: I got out nearly 20 years ago. It was not a particularly liberal org. back then. AFR played Rush (the gas bag, not the crappy band [FN2]) every day.

    [FN2] Yeah, I said it. Rush is a crappy band. So sue me.

  50. 50.

    jl

    I had a nightmare about Balloon Juice. Nothing made sense and there was chaos, confusion and incomprehensible contradictions, and extremely odd lawless behavior every second…

    I think it was nightmare. It couldn’t be real, could it? Naw…

    For more organized nonsense that will provide me with bland dreams about, lemme see, waking up in an alternative universe where the alternative Spock is an evil drama queen chasing me with Rocky and Bullwinkle shapshifting vampires (which I find to be a very restful sort of dream, BTW), I will read the CBO summer budget update.

    http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12316

    Hot off the presses, just in time to take on your Labor Day vacation!

    I guess the recent notoriety of budgets had gone to the CBO’s head, and they figure they can compete with the latest Grisham novel if they launch their update just in time to catch the end of the quickie summer must read season.

    So far there is no likeable 2D lawyer up against a dark conspiracy, and who has secret information which would blow it all open and let the good guys win if only an improbable fluke did not explode at the last minute, when our protagonist was in the most vulnerable position imaginable, and had to scramble to save his…

    But, the CBO report is shorter. I’ll say that for it.

  52. 52.

    RossInDetroit

    I think Dwayne formerlyTheRock Johnson is underrated as a comic actor. I loved him in Get Shorty*, Get Smart and Southland Tales.

    * as Eliot Wilhelm, the name of the slight, bearded, professiorial Michigan State film scholar.

  53. 53.

    Dennis SGMM

    @General Stuck:

    Aw geez, General, my deepest sympathies. I haven’t suffered from your affliction but I have friends who have. Isn’t it the damnedest thing when parts of your own body turn against you?

    Please take care of yourself and know that you have my best wishes.

  55. 55.

    JPL

    Since this is an open thread, I mentioned to a friend that Reagan’s law EMTALA did more to increase health costs than anything else. Although it sounded like a nice idea, . Aspirin might cost those with insurance twenty cents but those without insurance twenty dollars. Hospitals don’t expect to collect that they just want to write it off which means we pay for it again.
    The Supreme Court might overturn ACA’s mandate but they shouldn’t without overturning EMTALA. Since EMTALA doctors and hospitals were able to increase their profits because of us. Please don’t understand my message because I would prefer a single payer but EMTALA prevents that.

  57. 57.

    Rihilism

    I had a dream once that I was carefully crossing a rope ladder that was strung across the Missouri river. Below me were these ginormous, pink transistor radios, all of them playing the jingle from Mutual of Omaha as they gently floated downstream…

    Mutual of Omaha is people, U can count on when the goings’ rough…

  60. 60.

    suzanne

    Weirdness at work.

    About a week and a half ago, the principal of our office announced that everyone was getting their hours and salary cut back by 25%. We each met with him personally to iron out the details. Today, I found out that 4 people in our office actually got laid off effective September 15 but have been sworn to secrecy, so I don’t know who they are.

    Ugh.

  61. 61.

    JPL

    @suzanne: I’m so sorry. That really sucks. Repubs are running on doing away with the minimum wage because that will help them rise out of poverty or something. I’m lost on how to help this mentality.

  62. 62.

    JWL

    What a strange coincidence.

    Last night I dreamt you commanded Ned Beatty to squeal like a pig, as a grinning Rick Perry looked on while playing a banjo.

  64. 64.

    asiangrrlMN

    @General Stuck: Fuck. Good luck with that, Stuck. That sounds like not much fun at all.

    My dreams all suck. Friends die in them. I die in them. I get assaulted in them. I’m late for something/not ready for a test (best of my dreams), etc. It’s one reason I prefer not sleeping at all.

  65. 65.

    suzanne

    I had a really gross dream once in which my sinuses were blocked, and I picked my nose, and the end of a string came out. And I kept pulling, and pulling, and it slid out and first, but then the more I pulled, it burned. I woke up totally terrified, my heart pounding… and my nose was completely stuffed. It was awful.

  67. 67.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @asiangrrlMN: wait, nobody dies in dreams? wtf? And as for Derf. let me guess … herp derp libertarian cole, why won’t you love me? derp, derp.

    amirite?

  68. 68.

    fleeting expletive

    Years ago I used to have a recurring dream about fires, and they were terrifying. With lots of intense thinking about it and with some practice, I got to where when the fires started I’d dream a fire extinguisher into the dream, and that helped end the dreams. I’d been going through some really intense bad patch stuff for a couple of years, and concluded that the fires were these awful things that felt so threatening.

  70. 70.

    Rihilism

    @Martin: I envy you. I think it has to do with how long (and when) you are in rem sleep. Sometimes I have have dreams that are so bad that it can ruin my day (or occasionally several days)…

  71. 71.

    Jager

    The other night, in my dream, a kid I hated in high school shows up at a party, he is wearing a trench coat, he’s old but I recognize him. The party is happening now, he is wandering around the party in a trench coat, carrying a golf bag. In the golf bag he has fishing rods. I get in an argument with him and start whipping him with a fishing rod from his bag, I whip him until everybody’s shoes fall out from under his god damned trench coat…think it might be my new allergy medicine or do I need to call a psychologist?

  73. 73.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    I have occasional dreams about being back in boot camp. At some point I know I shouldn’t be there but I just cannot seem to wake up from it. It’s probably because that’s how I felt when I was in boot camp, 19 years ago.

  74. 74.

    JPL

    In hindsight my most memorable dream was one where I was trying to scream. It actually worked because now my ex jumped out of bed. You can chase those demons but you have to work hard at it.

  75. 75.

    Jeffro

    I had a dream that Dana Milbank made me laugh out loud.
    Oh wait, that was no dream…it was today’s WaPo, in reference to “Rick Perry, Theocrat”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rick-perry-is-no-libertarian/2011/08/30/gIQA6IsbqJ_story.html?hpid=z3

    Here’s the line, after he explains that Perry believes the Boy Scouts were not only right to ban gay scoutmasters, but super-DUPER right:

    I have no beef with the Scouts. (I quit my troop when I was 12, not because of excessive godliness but because the older boys kept getting high.)

    Which is quite telling on both our modern Boy Scouts and Milbank, really ;)

  76. 76.

    RossInDetroit

    When I smoked I used to have dreams that I was suffocating or drowning. It was pretty awful to wake up in a sweat, gulping air.

  77. 77.

    scav

    I mostly get recurrent landscapes in dreams, even in dreams that are separated by years. Weirdest effect though was getting stuck in a dream once when I knew just knew, I was stuck until i figured out I had to click something to make it to the next part of the dream. Kept happening all night: click to the next part of the dream; click to the next part of the dream. . . Yes, obvious, but I’d actually been maxing out on coding HTML.

  79. 79.

    El Cid

    I totally could have done this.

    13-Year-Old Designs Super-Efficient Solar Array Based on the Fibonacci Sequence
    __
    Plenty of us head into the woods to find inspiration. Aidan Dwyer, 13, went to the woods and had a eureka moment that could be a major breakthrough in solar panel design.
    __
    On a bleak winter hiking trip to the Catskill Mountains, the 7th-grader from New York noticed a pattern among tree branches, and determined (as naturalist Charles Bonnet did in 1754) that the pattern represented the Fibonacci sequence of numbers. Aidan wondered why, and figured it had something to do with photosynthesis.
    __
    In a pretty innovative experiment, this intrepid young scientist set about duplicating an oak tree, comparing its sunlight-capturing abilities to a traditional rooftop solar panel array. Guess what he found?
    __
    First he determined the ratios representing the spiral pattern of the leaves and branches on an oak tree, using a cylindrical double-protractor tool of his own design.
    __
    Then he copied the pattern using a computer program, and built an oak tree-shaped solar array out of PVC pipe. He next built a flat-panel array mounted at 45 degrees, like a typical home rooftop array, and attached data loggers to each model to monitor voltage.
    __
    You can read Aidan’s award-winning essay here, which walks you through his experiment design and his results. But the short story is that his tree design generated much more electricity — especially during the winter solstice, when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky.
    __
    At that point, the tree design generated 50 percent more power, without any adjustments to its declination angle.
    __
    He determined the tree’s Fibonacci pattern allowed some solar panels to collect sunlight even if others were in shade, and prevented branches on a tree from shading other branches.

  80. 80.

    Jager

    When I was in basic training the kid in the bunk above me launched himself in the air during a dream and crashed on the barracks floor he woke up and screamed “I was dreaming I was in the Army!” I laughed myself awake as did the rest of the platoon, good thing it was a quarter to five or his ass would have been grass!

  81. 81.

    WaterGirl

    @General Stuck: Oh, man. I am so sorry.

    My best friend had a kidney stone at least 20 years ago, and I’ll never forget what he said to me: “If they told me that cutting off my right arm would make the pain stop, I would say okay, do it”.

    Hang in there.

  86. 86.

    Joseph Nobles

    Man, my day was made after I found Rich Lowry’s defense of Rick Perry as an anti-science candidate. It’s up at National Review Online. Favorite quote:

    Science is often just an adjunct to the Left’s faith commitments.

    Which is to say, of course, that reality has a well-known liberal bias.

  88. 88.

    WaterGirl

    @suzanne: Oh, that’s bad. It doesn’t even seem legal to tell someone they can’t tell anyone they have lost their job. So what, 4 people just don’t show up for work on 9/15? That seems really weird.

    Side note: I mis-read your first line as “a year and a half ago when I got this job” and I thought: “Holy crap! can it have been that long? It seems like it was just a few months ago.”

    I felt much better after re-reading the beginning of the sentence.

    Edit:

    @asiangrrlMN: Shit, that sucks. No wonder you don’t sleep.

  90. 90.

    suzanne

    @lamh32:

    as the little “trashy romance” stuff was just about to begin…my damn alarm went off

    I often wake up right as the sex was about to start. I invariably try to fall back asleep, but to no avail.
    I rarely remember my dreams—typically I only remember them if I wake up while dreaming—and many of them fade from my memory as soon as I begin waking up. But the relatively few that I do remember have been doozies.

  91. 91.

    suzanne

    @WaterGirl:

    Oh, that’s bad. It doesn’t even seem legal to tell someone they can’t tell anyone they have lost their job. So what, 4 people just don’t show up for work on 9/15? That seems really weird.

    I have NO idea how this is going to work itself out. And even though I don’t know who the laid-off people are, I have my suspicions, and the secret is apparently out. I don’t know if management actually thought this was going to stay a secret.

  93. 93.

    El Cid

    @cleek: Luckily for Jonah Goldberg, no expertise was required in his having been nepotized into the L.A. Times by Monica Lewinsky scandaleer, Vince Foster murder paranoid, and anti-feminist self-titled “pussycat” Lucianne Goldberg, and kicking out actual journalist Robert Scheer in the process.

    Why do you need expertise when friends and relatives in high places can get your idiot, talentless ass in significant positions?

    And then you get to whine about how librulz is the reel Nazzis.

  95. 95.

    WaterGirl

    @El Cid: Holy crap, that is so cool! Wow, just wow. That is the coolest thing I have heard in a long time.

    By the way, now that I have commented 3 times, this thread is sure to be over.

    Edit: does that happen to anyone else, or is this really cause and effect and not just coincidence?

    Edit 2: In case I am really am single-handedly about to cause this thread to end, I will take this opportunity to say that I have scary or violent dreams when I eat pork. Bizarre, but true.

  97. 97.

    burnspbesq

    We haven’t had a good flame war in a while, and I’m in a pissy mood, so I’m going to try to start one.

    OS X Lion sucks the big one. It is by far the worst iteration of OS X to date. It will go down in the history of Apple as Tim Cook’s Katrina. He will not be around to have any of his 300andsomeodd million worth of options vest.

  98. 98.

    Corner Stone

    @Emma:

    God, all the good cooks are taken!

    I, uh..I cook all the time. And it pretty much rocks, if I do say so myself.

  99. 99.

    RossInDetroit

    Lately I wake up for about 1.5 to 2.5 hours in the middle of the night. I sleep for 3 or 4 hours, then I’m wide awake. I finally get back to sleep and catch a couple more hours. It’s not terrible but I don’t like spending 2 hours of my waking day in the pitch dark. To avoid waking anyone all I can do is read.
    Taking Mela**nin before bed helps me sleep through but I’d like to find a solution that doesn’t involve a pill.

  100. 100.

    burnspbesq

    @suzanne:

    Today, I found out that 4 people in our office actually got laid off effective September 15 but have been sworn to secrecy, so I don’t know who they are.

    Apparently you know that you’re not one of them. That seems like sufficient reason to grab a pint of ice cream and a spoon.

  101. 101.

    scav

    @RossInDetroit: I’m pretty sure I read some research that this actually was the usual pattern of sleep for medieval peasants and the ilk. That’s when they could chat among themselves and they couldn’t / didn’t have to work on anything else — too dark.

  106. 106.

    suzanne

    @Corner Stone: Yeah, I’ve only worked there for 6 months. I didn’t get laid off, though. I’m happy to be employed (for now), but I can’t feel good about this.

  109. 109.

    khead

    The responses @ 62 & 66 = comedy gold.

    Gold Jerry, gold!

    Ok, maybe not – but I did chuckle a bit.

  111. 111.

    El Cid

    @cleek: God-damn it. Serves me right for failing to Google-check such stories. And here I am the person who usually gets to respond to the panicked forwarded e-mails from coworkers and so forth with a link to Snopes. Fuck. Don’t drink and blog.

    I also assumed a lot more had been done behind the scenes where, you know, the scientists presumably behind the AMNH’s awards team had checked to see something like if a solar panel array could be supplemented etc by such an additional structure; I didn’t quite imagine that a skinny PVC tree with a few solar cells would pump out a lot more than a larger and properly oriented flat surface. Clearly I should only see what’s in the actual article rather than my head’s more charitable version.

    This should have been evaluated by a peer-reviewed publication, i.e., a journal headed by a set of 12 – 14 year old science fair participants.

    The lesson is, fuck these god-damn uppity kids who think they know so damn much. If God wanted kids to be smart, He wouldn’t have created Fox Nooz to tell people what to think.

    The real enemy here is the American Museum of Natural History for encouraging science anyway.

  114. 114.

    RossInDetroit

    @Corner Stone:

    Food intake is a possible culprit. If I eat right before bed I wake up for sure. If I fast before bed, same thing. The best pattern is a protein-rich light meal a couple of hours before bedtime.
    It happens in spells. I’ll go months sleeping through the night, then for a few weeks have disturbed sleep. Seasons seem irrelevant. The more physically tired I am the more likely I am to sleep through.
    Adult onset diabetes runs in the family. My dad was just diagnosed but he’s 22 years older than me.

  116. 116.

    El Cid

    More from the fifth-column rich.

    Now, as both France and Spain consider introducing a wealth tax, a group of 50 rich Germans have joined the “tax me harder” movement by renewing their open call to Angela Merkel to “stop the gap between rich and poor getting even bigger“.
    __
    The German group, Vermögende für eine Vermögensabgabe (The Wealthy for a Capital Levy) is the latest manifestation of a feeling among some well-off individuals that the spare cash in their bank accounts might be able to ease, if not solve, the financial crises threatening to cripple their countries.
    __
    “None of us are in Buffett’s or Bettencourt’s league,” said the founder, Dieter Lehmkuhl, a retired doctor with assets of €1.5m (£1.3m). “We’re a broad church – teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs. Most of our wealth is inherited. But we have more money than we need.”
    __
    The group’s manifesto claims Germany could raise €100bn (£88.5bn) if the richest paid a 5% wealth tax for two years.
    __
    On Monday, Lehmkuhl said he was renewing his call, first issued two years ago, to Merkel’s government to rethink its taxation policies. Currently the richest Germans are taxed a maximum of 42%. The previous chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, lowered the top tax rate from the 53% ceiling set by his predecessor, Helmut Kohl.
    __
    “I would say to Merkel that the answer to sorting out Germany’s financial problems, our public debt, is not to bring in cuts, which will disproportionately hit poorer people, but to tax the wealthy more,” said Lehmkuhl. “We are always hearing about savings packages, but never tax rises. Yet tax increases are a way out of this mess. That’s where the money is: rich people.
    __
    “Something needs to be done to stop the gap between rich and poor getting even bigger.”

    My god, why do they just want to punish people like themselves for being successful, especially the ones who worked long and hard at being born to the correct family?

    There came a point during the Depression in which increasing numbers of the super-rich joined the super-rich who had been backing social reforms for a long time — including the formation of plans for what would one day become Social Security — because they realized that stability and a decently surviving population were in their best interest.

    Thankfully, nowadays they’re outnumbered and out-powered by people who know how to just smash and grab as much as they can get and be entirely protected for it by governing officials looking out for their interests and fortunes for generations, and then leave the devil to bid at auction for the hindmost.

  118. 118.

    RossInDetroit

    @El Cid:

    One of the motivations for the rich to help the poor out of the Depression was that they had to live among them. Wealth is more international now. A mogul can jet off to a friendlier environment if the urchins on the street become too pitiful. Why assist when you can just ignore?

  123. 123.

    Corner Stone

    @Freddie deBoer:

    but then I have to sneak down to retrieve the hammers and when I am down there collecting them I am in sheer terror.

    Get down in the dirt with the rest of us.

  124. 124.

    MikeJ

    @soonergrunt: Not necessarily. You assume there’s no overlap. If 100% of the ones that are the brain fucking with you are the equivalent of a 10 year old, it’s only 55% total. Without knowing how much overlap there is between the two categories, all we know is somewhere between 55% and 100% of all dreams are accounted for.

    But I’m +3, so do your own math here.

  126. 126.

    soonergrunt

    @MikeJ: Well, I could come up with several Venn diagrams with varying degrees of overlap, but I’m just not even remotely interested.

  128. 128.

    El Cid

    @RossInDetroit: Another motivation was that many of them had something to do with a real economy, i.e., more than just gambling with a financialized economy’s ability to pretend that fable is reality (i.e., “$600 trillion” in derivatives etc).

    If you wished to be super-ultra-rich for generations, you an incentive to make sure that (a) there was an economy to continue to maintain your wealth; (b) there were no pesky changes in government by a pained rabble which would endanger your wealth; and (c) you looked like your achievements were a great and noble part of humanity to be beloved.

    Also, you could make sure that what reforms happened here weren’t too all soshullisty like was going on in Europe, where it was necessary to have the CIA buy the Italian elections and fund anti-leftist terrorism for generations.

    Actually, one major point of Social Security — the design of which was pretty along the lines of what corporate-sponsored research commissions had concluded — for the super rich was to rid corporations of the burdens and variabilities of private pensions.

  129. 129.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    .
    .
    Oh, those firebaggers have gone a bag too far this time. Can you believe that some back-pager over there wrote a lie-filled, hysteria-mongering article titled “It’s Official – Clarence Thomas Is A Psychopath”?

    Ginni! Report for duty! NOOOOWWW!
    .
    .

  132. 132.

    El Cid

    Looks like it’s time to cut some more wasteful spending on schools and science and Medicare and such so as to reign in all this big government free-money liberalism.

    As much as $60 billion in U.S. funds has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade through lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and corruption, an independent panel investigating U.S. wartime spending estimates.
    __
    In its final report to Congress, the Commission on Wartime Contracting said the figure could grow as U.S. support for reconstruction projects and programs wanes, leaving both countries to bear the long-term costs of sustaining the schools, medical clinics, barracks, roads and power plants already built with American tax dollars.
    __
    Much of the waste and fraud could have been avoided with better planning and more aggressive oversight, the commission said. To avoid repeating the mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, government agencies should overhaul the way they award and manage contracts in war zones, the commission recommended.
    __
    The Associated Press obtained a copy of the commission’s 240-page report in advance of its scheduled public release on Wednesday.
    __
    Created by Congress in 2008, the eight-member commission held more than two dozen hearings, interviewed hundreds of military and civilian officials and traveled multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan. The panel’s final report is the most comprehensive examination so far of the U.S. dependence on contractors and the government’s ability to manage them in combat areas.
    __
    The commission said calculating the amount lost through waste and fraud is difficult because there is no commonly accepted methodology for doing so. Using information it has gathered over the past three years, however, the commission said at least $31 billion has been lost and the total could be as high as $60 billion. The commission called the estimate “conservative.”
    __
    Overall, the commission said spending on contracts and grants to support U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is expected to exceed $206 billion by the end of the 2011 budget year. Based on its investigation, the commission said contracting waste in Afghanistan ranged from 10 percent to 20 percent of the $206 billion total. Fraud during the same period ran between 5 percent and 9 percent of the total, the report said.

    Basically the liberals put together this Commission to blame the troops for all the damn welfare spending to the poor and coloreds.

    I’m really looking forward to all the massive changes in “the way [government agencies] award and manage contracts in war zones,” which may even include such troop-hating and job-creating-hating moves as complaining about bad activities in reports and issuing somewhat disapproving and disappointed letters of sort-of almost reproach.

    Anyway, ha ha, let’s not waste our time on all this looking backwards and not forwards and focus on cutting all the welfare to the illegals who are making the debt take our jobs.

  134. 134.

    General Stuck

    however, the commission said at least $31 billion has been lost and the total could be as high as $60 billion

    Somebody should check Dick Cheney’s mattress/

  135. 135.

    Mike in NC

    Over at gawker.com, there’s a pretty good feature called “The 50 Worst States in America” worth checking out.

    Worst five:
    1. Arizona
    2. Alabama
    3. Utah
    4. New Jersey
    5. Mississippi

  136. 136.

    dead existentialist

    @RossInDetroit: If you’re still here: A dram or two of single malt sipped judiciously over the course of the hour before taking to bed will produce the most efficacious sleep the human body can ask for.

    Me: I prefer gulping the cheap stuff and waking up drunk.

  140. 140.

    wasabi gasp

    Think I’d rather have Patton Oswalt bust into my dreams wearing droopy drawers while flailing a spatula and threatening to press my grilled cheese like I’ve never had it pressed before, than have him getting all persnickety about candles.

  142. 142.

    Calouste

    @Steeplejack:

    There is a German translation (“Atlas wirft die Welt ab”), but considering a new copy is 595 Euros on amazon.de and a used copy 195 Euro, I assume the print run was very limited.

  144. 144.

    RossInDetroit

    @dead existentialist:
    I went to bed but came back. Thanks for the suggestion. I do find that a small amount of Scotch and a really dull book before bed helps me nod off. The only thing that consistently keeps me down for the duration is Melat**in. I do that when I have to but I don’t want to become stuck with a kludge fix for a problem that might have a better solution not involving chemicals. My dad’s a Pharmacist. I’ll have to check with him on what’s safe to do long term and what side effects are.

  145. 145.

    Argive

    John Hawkins on Sarah Palin:

    Out of everyone who’s run for the presidency in the last few elections, on both sides of the aisle, I find Sarah Palin to be the most admirable person. She’s extremely competent, charismatic, she’s succeeded in business, politics, raised a big family, made a huge difference for the GOP in 2010, done more for feminism than anyone since Susan B. Anthony — she’s just an extraordinary human being. Of course, because all of that’s true, the Left has put together an unprecedented three year long, incredibly vicious smear campaign aimed at her and her family.

    I just . . . wow. Starbursts!

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