Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

He really is that stupid.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

“But what about the lurkers?”

So many bastards, so little time.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

The lights are all blinking red.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

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Open Thread

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I finally gave up on reading Sullivan’s political stuff for the sake of my blood pressure (for example), but his staff does once in a while find the kind of link that reminds me why god created the internet. This twitter feed from a spam-bot promoting a crudely hacked-together site that sells e-books is transcendental.

Chat about whatever.

***Update***

Don’t know why the links did not copy right, but fixed now.

Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    Face

    This is too funny (via TPM)….there was apparently a very serious effort to have Wyoming acquire an aircraft carrier. No, not Oregon. Wyoming.

    Also, alternate currency. Bright minds out west, there is.

  4. 4.

    Lee

    Anyone here have any experience treating trichtotillomania?

    My daughter has had it since 5th grade and we’ve actually been fairly successful in helping at home.

    She wants to look into some sort of therapy for it (she is now in 9th grade).

    thanks,

  7. 7.

    trollhattan

    We’re coming up on the Japan Tsunami’s first anniversary. It would seem there are quite a few tales we’ve not yet been told.

    The Japanese government feared that millions of Tokyoites might have to be evacuated during the worst of last year’s nuclear crisis, but kept the scenario secret to avoid panic in some of the world’s most crowded urban areas, according to an internal report.
    __
    The 15-page report, by the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission, was delivered to the then-Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, two weeks after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami triggered the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
    __
    It warned that if the situation spiralled out of control, compulsory or voluntary evacuation orders would have to be issued to residents living within 250 kilometres (155 miles) of the damaged facility, a radius that would have included the Tokyo metropolitan area that is home to around 30 million people.
    __
    The directive would also have covered several large cities to the north and west of the plant, including Sendai. Some of the areas would be contaminated for “several decades”, the report warned.

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/revealed-secret-evacuation-plan-for-tokyo-after-fukushima-6295353.html

  8. 8.

    Martin

    @Face: Awesome:

    “Things happen quickly sometimes — look at Libya, look at Egypt, look at those situations,” said State Rep. David Miller (R), who introduced the bill. “We wouldn’t have time to meet as a Legislature or even in special session to do anything to respond.”

    So Wyoming legislators have nothing better to do with the state taxpayer money than to prepare for a liberal overthrow of the US government. They’re drinking a bit too much of that usurper lemonade there in the Equality State.

  9. 9.

    Suffern ACE

    @Face: Well give them credit. Usually a legislature would have to hire a consultant to explain the feasibility of obtaining an aircraft carrier. $18,000 in this case to hire someone to scare you to death for an evening in a hotel room. Sounds like a job for someone state rep’s nephew.

  10. 10.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    @Lee:

    The character Chad does this in Terri.

    Have you considered shaving (close cropped buzz cut) her head for a few months in a row? Perhaps if she has no hair she won’t feel so compelled to pull it out?

    I was able to quit smoking by avoiding the triggers that made me really, really want a cigarette.

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    @Martin:

    I’m encouraging my Idaho friend to promote getting an attack sub to counter Wyoming’s belligerent carrier move. They should also make plans to invade and seize Jackson and the Grand Tetons. That’s most of the cool stuff.

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    @Face:
    $18K for the task force to study this cockamamie idea … well, they could meet in a conference room at the state capitol, so renting premises wouldn’t have to come out of that. So presumably it’s all going to pay for coffee and donuts.

    It’s a piddling amount. If you want to waste public funds, at least be more ambitious.

  14. 14.

    Lee

    It is her eyelashes. Just with support at home we went from her pulling on a regular basis to no pulling at all for a couple of years.

    Just recently she started a bit of pulling again and wants to get into some sort of therapy before it gets worse (if she can’t beat it).

    She actually met a younger sibling of a friend who has trich and talking to/helping her helped her stop.

  15. 15.

    sal

    I’m encouraging my Idaho friend to promote getting an attack sub to counter Wyoming’s belligerent carrier move.

    I think they test submarines in Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho. It’s a start.

  17. 17.

    Suffern ACE

    @Amir Khalid: I just did some work. For a one time $3,000 per head poll tax, Wyoming to get 1 aircraft carrier and 1 plane to fly off it. If they build only one naval base for it, they could probably get by with 7,000 personnel. More than two ports of call, and they’d need to draft most of the city of Cheyenne.

    Certainly feasible.

    I charge $55 per hour if anyone is interested.

  18. 18.

    Nicole

    I haven’t clicked the link, but I assume you’re talking about horse_ebooks. Sigh. So much hilarity.

  19. 19.

    jl

    @trollhattan:Thanks, Some interesting stuff on the Japan earthquake released today. I heard some sound bites on the news this morning and will follow the links.

    I also heard on the news, in a separate report, this morning that the U.S. gummint will celebrate the one year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami by cutting back on its Pacific coast tsunami warning and emergency evacuation system. Cool.

    I suppose hurricane, blizzard, wildfire and tornado public safety programs are getting similar treatments, which will be announced on the appropriate anniversaries.

  20. 20.

    jl

    Horse Books spambot spits out some great stuff. but I already knew about this one:

    ‘ some were told whether they wanted to hear it or not, I was excited and I knew, like I knew, like I knew. Well you know when you just know ‘

    Looks like they some books on politicians:

    ‘Spicing up the story is his wealthy but bored socialite wife’

    ‘ Sacrifice 33 ideas. They are often irksome to him. They form a sort of spiritual tyranny. Why? Simply because, like all the unseen ‘

  21. 21.

    samara morgan

    @Nicole: horse_ebooks was in the top ten twitter feeds last month on boingboing (i think)…
    personally i like Republican Dalek better.
    Sully’s borg are nothing if not terminally lazy.

  22. 22.

    starscream

    I still would love to hear Sullivan answer two questions:

    1) Why should Obama campaign on deficit the reduction when voters don’t give a shit about it?

    2) Why should Obama work to reduce the deficit when Republicans are just going to fuck it up when they take back power, as they always do?

  23. 23.

    Schlemizel

    @Lee:
    What have you tried so far?

    While it probably won’t be popular and I have no idea if they are appropriate for the age but have you discussed anti-anxiety meds? Some people have had good luck with OCD issues.

    Good luck & let us know how it goes. I have recently discovered that some people here are pretty good listeners if you need to rant about it.

  25. 25.

    trollhattan

    @David Koch:

    Nice touch, speaking to the UAW on primary day.

    Don’t worry union thugs, Willard’s got your back (in the crosshairs, but anyway…).

  26. 26.

    Lee

    @Schlemizel:

    Currently just behavior modification. We just give her goals. “If she does not pluck her eyelashes for X amount of time she gets Y”. We did that for two years (the culminating prize was an iPhone). So right now she is under a lot of stress with school and does not have a goal.

    We asked her if she wants a new goal to work towards, but she actually inquired about therapy.

    I’ve read a lot about it, it seems drugs are most useful where there are other factors in play. Since she really only has this and relatively minor, we are hoping that just some good old fashion therapy with behavior modification will work. Thankfully there is a support group that meets in Dallas, so we might be taking her to that.

  27. 27.

    Trooptrap Tripetrope

    I’ve been successfully ignoring Twitter for a long time now, but this mother lode of weirdness may change all that.

    “Turn trash bags into Tarantulas.” Indeed.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    @Lee:

    I don’t have any experience with it, but I would call your local children’s hospital and see if they can refer you to anyone she can see. It sounds like she may have some stresses in her life that she wants to talk to someone other than her parents about, but it’s okay, that’s good. That means she’s working towards becoming a self-sufficient adult.

  29. 29.

    pat

    “trichtotillomania”

    OMG, I had no idea what this means until I read the response about shaving the head so there is no hair to pull.

    I’m pretty sure this has no relevance, but it reminded me that when I was 11 or 12 (puberty, anyone?) and my dad was drinking, and I probably needed glasses….

    I pulled out all my eyelashes. Used to sit in the bathroom with a mirror and a tweezers and pull the suckers out as soon as they came in. Ugh.

    I don’t know when or why I outgrew it. Maybe getting fitted with glasses helped. Anyway, in my case there could have been some psychological stuff at work too.

    As I said, probably not at all relevant.

  30. 30.

    pat

    I’m not going to edit, in fear of losing the post, but I see others are going in this same direction.

    Now I’ll go read more……

  31. 31.

    BonnyAnne

    @Lee:

    Often cognitive behavior therapy + group therapy + a mild antidepressant or antianxiety med can work very well: the three-pronged approach attacks that sort of issue from lots of angles.

    For antianxiety meds, I personally recommend BuSpar, which is non-addictive (unlike benzos) and has generally mild side effects. Plus, of course, regular therapy. :)

  32. 32.

    Schlemizel

    @Lee: Defiantly not drugs alone. It sounded like you were already doing other measures and they were not cutting it. Sometimes the meds can buy you time to get control and allow other therapies to work. Maybe a mental health counselor (either an MD or just a trained pro) can help her, it sounds like she was on a real winning streak. Teen years are hellish for kids but it sounds like she is at least ahead of the curve & trying to beat this thing.

    This must be so miserable for her & hard as hell on you guys. Let us know how it goes.

  33. 33.

    Lee

    @pat:

    It was not until she got it and I started doing research that I found out how frequent it is.

    Back when we started battling it, we would mention it to friends and a significant number of times someone would chime in “Oh yeah I did that back in HS/College, except I pulled my X”. Couple of guys said they did it during finals all thru college.

    Reading up on it, if it manifests itself during puberty then it is much easier to treat than if it starts to manifest itself during adulthood.

  34. 34.

    Lee

    @Schlemizel: The toughest part was getting her to recognize it. I think in part she does it as anxiety release. She does not really know she is doing it. Once we crossed that hurdle it was just a lot of support and rewards.

    Of course there were a couple huge setbacks. She came down crying one morning (7th grade) with all her eyelashes gone. Mom called into work and told them she was going to be late. A quick trip to Target and some fake eyelashes and she was a new person. That was the huge turn around.

    It is a viscous cycle. General anxiety leads to pulling, which leads to image anxiety, which leads to more pulling. She wore those fake eyelashes for a bit over a year. She was so good at putting them on that very few of her friends knew they were fake.

    A funny story related to those eyelashes. So she is going to Homecoming (no eyelashes needed) and is getting ready with a gaggle of her friends and a couple of them wanted to wear fake eyelashes. They could not put them on. So my daughter steps up “Here, let me do it” and a couple of minutes later both of them had them on and were amazed.

  35. 35.

    JGabriel

    Tim F. @ Top:

    This twitter feed from a spam-bot promoting a crudely hacked-together site that sells e-books is transcendental.

    Adrien Chen @ Gawker:

    In addition to tweeting spam links, Horse_ebooks has apparently been programed to evade Twitter’s spam filters by posting random snatches of text it scrapes from books and websites.

    It seems everyone so far is missing the truly horrifying implications of this development: it suggests that the first AI to pass a Turing Test will be a Spam-bot that evolved to pass increasingly more difficult tests to verify it’s “humanity”.

    .

  38. 38.

    Patricia Kayden

    You have to cut Andrew Sullivan some slack. He’s conservative. I don’t agree with him on everything, but appreciate his genuine support of President Obama.

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