Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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Giving up is unforgivable.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

The unpunished coup was a training exercise.

We still have time to mess this up!

Republicans don’t trust women.

So many bastards, so little time.

Let there be snark.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

I really should read my own blog.

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Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

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Another long day- dad had to go to the hospital at 4 am because he was having excruciating stomache pain, and it turned out he has a kidney stone, a urinary tract infection, and infection of his pancreas. That sucks, but it was a stressful day because they were very worried about his elevated pancreas levels, and everyone of us was convinced it would be pancreatic cancer or something horrible. All things considered, this is good news. They are going to do a catheter and blow up the kidney stone, and he might even be able to come home tonight.

At any rate, drove to the big city to pick up some egg rolls and wonton soup for mom (her favorite) because she had such a stressful day and probably didn’t want to cook, and on the way home got to check out my favorite wingnut’s Redneck Twitter feed:

Won’t someone please pray for the rich white guy screwing working people. Please, jeebus!

Reader Interactions

81Comments

  3. 3.

    Kathy

    Hopes for a speedy recovery. Good on you for taking care of your Mom too, she needs it. Hopefully they will be over with their doggies for another out of control Cole cookout soon.

  4. 4.

    Valdivia

    Sorry about your dad John, I am glad they have it under control and it is something fixable. One always imagines or fears the worse. My dad just went through a long and hellish brain operation (and every minute of those 7 hours I was fearing the worse) but thank the forces of the universe he was totally himself right afterwards giving the nurses hell. They kicked him out of the hospital two days later :)

  7. 7.

    Punchy

    They sell egg rolls in DubVee? Is it next to the chaw, the pallets of pseudoephedrine, or the dusty boxes of toothpaste?

  9. 9.

    Anoniminous

    As painful as it is … kidney stone much more better than pancreatic cancer. Hope your dad heals quickly.

  11. 11.

    karen

    John,

    Has your dad ever had them before? Or anyone else in your family?

    As someone who has had kidney stones about 10 times, my heart goes out to you and your family. I’m a woman and it hurt, I think it’s worse for guys because they have a smaller opening to pass the shards through.

    Kidney stones are often a congenital problem (in my family on my dad’s side at least though they skipped him oddly, his sister and nephews and I get them) and once you get them, you’re prone to them.

    I don’t know if you know this but find out what the stone was made of so you know what to avoid. Mine was calcium oxalate and I found out that the iced tea I drank all the time was major cause. I can drink black tea once in a while but not the several times a day as I did before. I also found out that citrus can help to prevent them from forming again. But the biggest thing is something I have problems doing: drink lots and lots of water.

  13. 13.

    Surreal American

    @karen:

    If I were a rich man…I still wouldn’t make a campaign contribution to Scott Walker.

  15. 15.

    Raven

    @karen I thought I had them a couple of years ago but it turned out the blood came from me deadlifting a harley that tipped. The scope was supposed to be so awful but it wasn’t that bad. The people in the clinic with the real kidney stones made me really glad I didn’t.

  17. 17.

    BGinCHI

    Best to your Dad, John.

    That’s gotta be painful and I bet it was scary as hell for you guys.

  21. 21.

    The Fat Kate Middleton

    Hope Dad Cole is feeling better as we speak, and will be home at least before the end of the day tomorrow. During my recent hospital visit, they’d assure me every day that I’d go home “tomorrow”. They had to tell me that five times before it finally happened.

  22. 22.

    dww44

    @karen: Thanks for this. I had one about a year ago and I do drink iced tea a very very lot. Will switch to some water.

    John, hope your Dad gets all better from here.

  23. 23.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Hey, kidney stones certainly beat the alternatives for what could be causing a persistent stomach ach. Hope you dad gets better soon.

  24. 24.

    PeakVT

    I’m praying that Walker will spontaneously burst into flames.

    Is that enough uncivil enough to get me a Moore award nomination?

    Also, best to your father, Cole.

  25. 25.

    lamh35

    Ok, so I’ve become an avid fan of Person of Interest. One of the tricks used is this bit where the guys is near the target and he used his phone to “clone” the target’s phone and from that he’s able to tap into the target’s cell phone calls and has access to all of the cellphones call logs, contacts, data, etc…I’m not usually a big brother paranoid, but please tell me this ain’t real technology???

  26. 26.

    Hunter Gathers

    If there was an Invisible Man In The Sky to ask favors of, I’m pretty sure that asking him to keep a lying, soon-to-be-indicted asshole in office would be a big no-no.

  27. 27.

    Yutsano

    May your dad rest well and recover quickly.

    @PeakVT: Is it enough that if he wins he gets indicted tomorrow?

  31. 31.

    Linda Featheringill

    The last couple of days have been rough on my ego. I finally stopped everything and took on a couple of hours of blues therapy: Muddy Waters, Johnny Winter, Junior Kimbrough, and Big Mama Thornton. Feeling better now.

    Go Wisconsin! This is so important, I think, and I’ve been fretting about it all day.

    Hope Papa Cole gets to feeling better.

  32. 32.

    Steve in DC

    Is gov Walker even rich? I dunno how much sales at IBM pulls down, nice but hardly the big bucks.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    From what people who’ve had kidney stones have told me, it’s one of the most painful things that can happen to you. Women who’ve both had kidney stones and gone through childbirth swear that childbirth was less painful.

    I will now continue drinking my water. I’ve really gotta build back up to 64 oz. a day.

  34. 34.

    Yutsano

    @Steve in DC: It doesn’t really matter. If he doesn’t go to jail for the John Doe incident he’ll have lots of wingnut welfare waiting for him win or lose.

  35. 35.

    Steve in DC

    @Mnemosyne

    Oh the joys! For men you can get something where your balls twist up and all hell breaks loose. This is a situation where our nether regions work against us, kinda like being kicked in the crotch real hard.

    Also our urethra is narrower, hurts worse there as well.

  37. 37.

    tulip

    Hope your dad is feeling better soon, John and your mom too. And I really hope it’s not too painful passing the stone.

  38. 38.

    Steve in DC

    @Yutsano:

    That might be true but he’s not rich now.

    Walker comes off as a true believer or an asshole. Furthermore the fact that he hates unions and worked for an IT company goes hand in hand. Unionization is a huge issue that comes up in various IT and telco circles, and the vast majority hate unions with a fucking passion.

    I can blame a large part of this on dealing electrical workers in a union and the delays, extra costs, fiascos, not working on deadlines the way we do, and the general “they are all lazy fucking assholes who should starve in the streets” attitude thrown at them… and part of it on the sort of “I want to keep what I get” attitude of the tech bubble, and another part of it being the vast amount of ex DOD types in the field, but hatred of unions is as much part of being an IT tech as vast amounts of coffee and loving computers.

    So that a former IBM worker is busting his ass off to screw union workers sounds less like “rich guy” and more like “you just put a tech type in office”.

  39. 39.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    A friend of mine had kidney stones while she was pregnant with her first child. I told her I had it on good authority that childbirth would be a piece of cake, relatively speaking.

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    @Raven:

    My co-worker with kidney stones missed a week of work, which he mostly spent coiled in the fetal position on the bathroom floor. So that shot may be a more painful moment in time, but kidney stones just keep on giving for days and days and days.

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    John, please add my best wishes for your dad to those of everybody else who’s posted here. And best to your mom as well.

    And you, of course.

  48. 48.

    Steve in DC

    @Mnemosyne

    Having had them it’s pretty bad. The pain is also worse for males for anatomical reasons. The problem is a lot of guys in a certain age group will stubbornly just suffer through all sorts of stuff till they are carted off by an ambulance.

    This sort of stupidity

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

  49. 49.

    quannlace

    Also our urethra is narrower, hurts worse there as well.

    I’ve been there; and a kidney stone suck. But it’s the one thing where I think guys have it worse (passing-wise) then us gals.
    Good wishes for Father Cole.
    ***********
    And also good wishes for Wisconsinites to give Gov. Walker his walking papers.

  50. 50.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    I got a rather short hair cut today, so I’ll be a little bit more comfortable during the summer. Almost tempted to post a pic.

  51. 51.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Mnemosyne:
    I used to get rabid UTIs in the 80s, thanks to wearing panty hose or tight jeans. At one point my kidneys were on the point of shut down. I switched to stockings and I drank gallons per day, water, hot tea, you name it, but since that time I have made sure my liquid intake is huge.

  52. 52.

    mai naem

    I feel for yout dad John. FYI, the post exploding kidney stone ain’t no barrel of laughs either. You can have little shards coming down your ureter and urethra. Ouch.

  54. 54.

    JPL

    Hugs across the tubes for the Cole family. Give your mom an extra squeeze from me.

  55. 55.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    Yeah, I try to drink at least 2 litres of water a day, especially when the weather is warm out. Clear/light yellow urine is my standard I shoot for.

  57. 57.

    quannlace

    Snails keep eating my plants! Damn it!

    Put out shallow dishes of flat beer overnight. They crawl in and drown (but die happy.) But be careful if you have any dogs. If I didn’t first pick up the dishes before my Clemmie went out in the morning, she’d slurp it up like fine Champagne. And no worries about any dead slugs in it. Extra protein!

  58. 58.

    Steve in DC

    @quannlace:

    We’ve got two issues… harder to past and it getting caught and twisting up your balls cutting the blood off (this is not good at all), so yeah in THIS case, we have the pain in passing an object.

    Of course, this isn’t something you realize till you actually get one and go with the guy standard option “I’ll just sit at home and drink beer till I piss it out” and end up crying.

  59. 59.

    Raven

    @Mnemosyne: I hear ya, having shattered my leg in 18 places and fractured my t-6 vertebrae I find arguments about what is “most painful” pretty useless. I shouldn’t have brought it up.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @Raven:

    From what I’ve heard, it’s the closest men can come to understanding the pain of childbirth because the geometry is somewhat similar (trying to pass an object that’s larger than the tube it’s supposed to pass through).

    So I doubt that it’s actually worse pain than literally breaking your spine, but it does give the gents a tiny glimpse into the problems of being a woman. :-)

  66. 66.

    Citizen_X

    Good luck to your dad. Kidney stones are better, I guess, but he might not feel that way when he’s trying to pass them. : (

  67. 67.

    Anne Laurie

    Condolences to the elder Mr. Cole, and best wishes for a speedy recovery.

    Condolences to the younger Mr. Cole, whose empathetic hypochondria will have him guzzling water and hyperfocusing on the results for at least the rest of the week.

    And particular condolences to Mrs. Cole, for having to put up with the other two. :)

  68. 68.

    cckids

    Sending good thoughts your way, John.

    My dad is currently in the hospital with more complications from his CLL. He & my mom were supposed to leave Thursday on a road trip to visit their siblings across America, were going to be gone a month. He is very down, bordering on depression, to have to postpone or possibly cancel it. Hopefully he will have better news tomorrow.

  69. 69.

    Raven

    @Mnemosyne: And pain is a highly individual experience. I did a great deal of reading before my Cystoscopy and I was terrified after what I read. It simply wasn’t that bad for me.

  70. 70.

    muddy

    @Raven: I hate the 1 – 10 pain scale they ask you. For kids it has variations on a smiley/frowny face, even less understandable than the number system. They don’t give anything to compare to, so everyone’s number is entirely subjective and meaningless. I said I figured childbirth ought to be at 10, I’ve done that and I would put gout in the same category, altho an entirely different kind of pain. But what is 1 of pain? I said for 3 or less I would probably not bother to mention it. How much is a broken leg? Bone Cancer? Never had those, I don’t know.

    I was told it was a state statute that they ask it, wtf. Get the gov’t out of my Medicare! Sorry.

    I hope your dad has more joy from his recent health intervention than I have been having with mine. I’m like a freak bad medical story magnet.

  72. 72.

    22over7

    Hugs for you and for Papa (and Mama) Cole. Yes, kidney stones suck. The infection is also painful as hell. But these things are fixable and the drugs will help him sleep soundly tonight. He’ll be up and about in no time.

    And you are such a good boy, getting your mama’s favorite supper for her. We mamas are never more grateful than when we find out (often by accident) that our kids are, somehow, wonderful people.

  75. 75.

    Yutsano

    I’ve always enjoyed Mario Batali’s food. The fact he’s a Seattle native don’t hurt either. But he put his money where his mouth is and lived on food stamp budgets for one month. He writes probably the strongest argument why we need this safety net portion and if anything we need to increase it.

    (Hufflepuff link. But it’s worth it.)

  76. 76.

    Maude

    @Yutsano:
    He lived for one week on them and didn’t say what he bought. The article was a bit vague.
    Also he knew he’d be eating well at the end of the week on stamps.
    When there’s a COLA raise on Social Security, the amount of food stamps goes down.
    The problem is the federal poverty guidelines. They are way too low.

  77. 77.

    karen

    @Maude:

    Cranberry juice helps UTIs and bladder infections because they’re acidic. However if the stones are made of calcium oxalate it might actually hurt.

  79. 79.

    lol chikinburd

    Final WI exit polls are exactly even — 50-50.

    The bad news is that that’s right where the Waukesha County Clerk’s office wants it. The good news is that the Waukesha County Clerk’s office’s hand has pretty much been forced, and they’re going to have a hard time being inconspicuous about it. And that so doing will compound the embarrassment of the apparently-inevitable indictment.

  80. 80.

    Insomniac

    Best wishes for your dad’s speedy and full recovery, John. And also that your mom doesn’t get too stressed and can find some calm and ease as well.

  81. 81.

    Ann Marie

    My sympathies to your father. I had a kidney stone and it was the worst pain I’ve ever been in. Still, it beats the heck out of pancreatic cancer.

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