Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Let’s finish the job.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

I was promised a recession.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Let there be snark.

Second rate reporter says what?

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55Comments

  5. 5.

    catclub

    Friedman half making sense. I saw it at Political Animal: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_09/what_are_we_fighting_for052138.php

    the sense part:

    When I read that, I think that Nader Mousavizadeh, who co-leads the global consulting firm Macro Advisory Partners, is correct when he says: “When it comes to intervening in the Arab world’s existential struggle, we have to stop and ask ourselves why we have such a challenge getting them to help us save them.

    the other half:

    why is it that Shiite Iran, which helped trigger this whole Sunni rebellion in Iraq, is scoffing at even coordinating with us

  6. 6.

    raven

    I left for Augusta at 6am, sat through a 3 hr presentation, had the best fried chicken I have ever had in Thomson, Ga on the way back and now I’m gonna cook dinner!

  8. 8.

    KG

    it’s been oppressively hot in Southern California. Like, 100 degrees before the heat index. And I just want to lie under a ceiling fan and do nothing.

    Actually, that’s not true, what I really want right now is a cafe au lait and beingets at Cafe du Monde.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Been awake since 1:23 AM. Been up since 3:02 AM. Tried napping twice. Didn’t work either time. Some days are just like this: Hard to do anything, even harder to not do anything. If I ever commit suicide, it’ll be on a day like today.

  10. 10.

    Punchy

    Been following that Philly hate crime story, where a bunch of Bros ‘n Hoes went Mayweather on 2 gays for no reason whatsoever. Will be interesting to see if Big Daddy’s Pockets can innocent-ify any of these fuckers or at least get them out of doing time. It’s felony assault, so at least some time in the pokie is the norm, right?

  11. 11.

    Elie

    @catclub:

    Right on. The more I read the more I am convinced we do not need to have more boots on the ground or expand our involvement. This is their mess — let them deal with it. We should have boundaries only where it impacts/involves us but otherwise, isis shmisis —

    I love it that Obama stepped on the General yesterday who said he might have to recommend more boots on the ground. Heh — O stopped that immediately. McCain and other Senators are having a foreign policy committee meeting and trying to twist Kerry this way and that…

    Yep — after initially thinking we needed to intervene more, I am absolutely convinced that would be a grave mistake. We cant have Bagdad overrun before the election but containment should be our strategy and letting some of the local folks fight their own battles

  13. 13.

    jacy

    Still in the hospital. Eventful couple of days involving no blood pressure, internal hematoma, passing out and waking up to a hospital room so full of medical personel were standing on chairs. And that was before i projectile vomited all over th CT scanner. Today has been less eventful. Had transfusion today and will hopefully be able to break out tomorrow. I think they’ll ne glad to seee go…

  14. 14.

    Elie

    @KG:

    Yes, I understand that. Obama is doing a brave thing and most people don’t recognize it as such — going up against the neocons and the military industrial complex is no fun.

    Hillary is quiet as a church mouse. Lord willing its her or some other decent Democrat, but she knows this mess could come her way.

    We do need to get out of the ME somehow… it aint looking good right now, though

  15. 15.

    Roger Moore

    @jacy:

    I think they’ll ne glad to seee go…

    I think they’re always glad to see patients go when they’re leaving healthier than they went in. Any news from pathology?

  16. 16.

    WaterGirl

    President Obama got caught by this same sort of thing right after he took office, only that time he hadn’t been around long enough to put the kibosh on it and ended up feeling like he had to support the surge for awhile before he could turn the ship around.

    I’m sure he has no intention of being hemmed in by his generals this time around.

    With a congress that can’t/won’t get anything passed, all President Obama can really control is his foreign policy. He’s not gonna get rolled on this and he’s not going to get suckered into a ground war. He says (and knows) that these countries need to be shedding their own blood & treasure and that nothing good can happen until or unless they take the lead.

    For the millionth time, I am so grateful that Obama is our president.

  17. 17.

    PhoenixRising

    What in the actual fuck, y’all?

    I spent $93 on a wristband device that syncs to the kid’s phone, tracking her sleep & waking her with a shake when her REM cycle is at a low point.

    Unpacked the box to find an eating disorder installation tool. The app, which is complex in ways that bespeak many months of dev time, doesn’t have a global setting for ‘I want to track just sleep/sleep and steps/sleep, steps & everything I eat’. The nagging about food can’t be turned off–it’s baked into the cake.

    (Yes, that was intentional.)

    My 14yo doesn’t need her phone reminding her to make healthy food choices, or asking her what she had for breakfast. And it would be SO simple to preset the app to ‘choose what you’re tracking’, it was a deliberate coding choice to not offer that option.

    Grr.

  19. 19.

    Belafon

    @WaterGirl:
    A bit of revisionism here:

    President Obama got caught by this same sort of thing right after he took office, only that time he hadn’t been around long enough to put the kibosh on it and ended up feeling like he had to support the surge for awhile before he could turn the ship around.

    Obama supported the surge because he felt we needed to do more in Afghanistan, which we had abandoned to go to war in Iraq. Refocusing on Afghanistan was one of the things he campaigned on.

  20. 20.

    scav

    @jacy: Ow ow ow ow, but if it wasn’t for the person having to clean up later, I nearly envy you your opportunity to vomit all over a bit of hospital equipment. Revenge. Not that the scanner in my case was the worst offender, but one presumably takes what opportunities present themselves. Continue well.

  22. 22.

    srv

    @WaterGirl:

    With a congress that can’t/won’t get anything passed

    See what happens when you use the bully pulpit?

    WASHINGTON — A wary Congress voted Wednesday to authorize President Obama’s mission to arm and train Syrian rebel forces as part of the administration’s effort to dismantle the threat posed by the Islamic State militant group.

    The bipartisan, 273-156, vote came after days of debate in which lawmakers across the political spectrum expressed doubts about the scope and merits of the mission but conceded that the potential threat to the U.S. is too great to ignore.

  24. 24.

    PhoenixRising

    @jacy: Wheee! Sounds like you’re making the best of it. I’ll never forget the moment 11 men saw my entire naked body, raising that lifetime total by 11–but for the morphine, I might have been bothered.

    Let us know what path says, too.

  25. 25.

    WaterGirl

    @jacy: Yikes, jacy, you have been through a lot. Thanks for the update, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been thinking of you.

    I’m pretty sure that in an earlier thread before your surgery I wished you the medical equivalent of not just safe travels, but uneventful travel. And we see how that turned out! Glad that today has been much less eventful.

    But I also wished for good news on the tumor and that has gone your way, and that’s the most important thing.

    I am sure everything that’s happened has given you a lot of perspective, and I just know that once you recover from surgery you’re gonna kick ass and have a great life.

  26. 26.

    Violet

    @jacy: Oh, wow! So sorry to hear that. Glad things are better now. Hopefully the worst is behind you and they’ll let you out soon.

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @Belafon: Maybe it was one more surge in Iraq? Whatever it was, one of President Obama’s general spoke very publicly – maybe in a speech? about needing more troops and I read at the time that the president felt very hemmed in and agreed to a surge because he felt he had to politically.

    I don’t think what I said was revisionist. YMMV

  30. 30.

    realbtl

    It’s a good time of year for doing JS. I’m in Fernie BC in a deserted ski area condo and my regimen for the last couple of days is: nibble, read, sleep, maybe drag my ass out into the sunshine on the deck, repeat as necessary.

  31. 31.

    Violet

    I’m exhausted today too. Probably because I haven’t slept well the past couple of days. Maybe I’m getting caught up from my trip. I got home late on Saturday but spent Sunday doing taxes and taking care of my parents so not really a day off. For some reason, maybe jet lag(?) I have not been able to get to sleep the last three nights. I’m just beat today.

  32. 32.

    jacy

    May be two weeks for final pathology report, but oncologist is pretty upbeat, so i’m not worried. I really want to thank everybody who commented and emailed – you guys are swell. And that’s not just the percocet talking.

  33. 33.

    Violet

    @jacy: Glad your pathologist is so upbeat. I think I mentioned a friend of mine who had a large abdominal tumor (I think it was uterine but can’t remember now) and it was benign. I was hoping the same for you and it looks like that is hopefully what happened.

    Maybe the tumor is all the horrible crap in your life being surgically removed from your body and it’s all better from here. Fingers crossed.

  35. 35.

    srv

    @WaterGirl:

    The quiet review burst into public view when General McChrystal’s secret report was leaked to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post a week after the first meeting. The general’s grim assessment jolted Washington and lent urgency to the question of what to do to avoid defeat in Afghanistan.

    Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the regional commander, secretly flew to an American air base in Germany for a four-hour meeting with General McChrystal on Sept. 25. He handed them his troop request on paper — there were no electronic versions and barely 20 copies in all.

    The request outlined three options for different missions: sending 80,000 more troops to conduct a robust counterinsurgency campaign throughout the country; 40,000 troops to reinforce the southern and eastern areas where the Taliban are strongest; or 10,000 to 15,000 troops mainly to train Afghan forces.

    McChrystal (or the leaker) forced them to go bigger than they wanted to. He felt Obama was his biotch and even felt the need to tell the Rolling Stone reporter that.

  36. 36.

    ChrisH

    Anyone have expertise in Iranian embargo law?

    I have a friend and co-worker on a visa who intends to eventually get citizenship. The brokerage firm that runs our 401k’s got around to discovering he was Iranian and says Iranian citizens are forbidden from owning US assets, that the 401k will be frozen and he will have to drive 2 hours to provide in person documentation at one of their offices that shows he has a US residence…at which point the 401k will be liquidated.

    I cannot find anything about the inability to own stocks online or being disallowed from having retirement accounts and something about it just doesn’t smell right to me.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    @jacy:

    Funsies! I only managed to have two of your adventures in my previous outpatient procedures, namely puking all over the nice physical therapist who was showing me how to use crutches after my knee surgery and almost getting my colonoscopy postponed yesterday because my blood pressure was too low (it’s naturally low, but they wanted it to be at least 90/60 before they pumped me full of drugs). They said it was probably because of dehydration and low blood sugar, which I wouldn’t be surprised was the case for you, too. Hopefully the worst is over for now.

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    @PhoenixRising:

    Is it a FitBit? I was able to turn off the food nagging on mine — if it is, let me know and I’ll see if I can figure out how I did it. If not, I love my FitBit. I even managed to convince Roger Moore to buy one because I loved mine so much. I have the currently contraband FitBit Force (some people had an allergic reaction to the nickel content and it was recalled, but I’m not allergic to nickel, so I kept mine).

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    @WereBear: You made me laugh out loud!

    Edit: projectile vomiting was just a theoretical concept to me until I projectile vomited on my sister’s mirror-covered wall in the bathroom as I was rushing in because I thought I was gong to be sick.

    So I got to actually watch the projectile part as the vomit spewed out of my mouth. That cannot be unseen, no matter how many years have gone by. I felt bad for jacy doing that in an MRI machine because no doubt she got to experience the fruits of her labors while she was in the machine.

  44. 44.

    Violet

    @WaterGirl: With my recent stomach virus I was projectile vomiting. Especially the first time. I barely made it to the porcelain throne in time. Fortunately I aimed well and it all made it in. Not bad from a standing position as I was rushing into the bathroom.

  46. 46.

    StringOnAStick

    Since this is the vomiting thread, I did that after my eardrum replacement surgery (since failed, twice). Seems the doc let the lidocaine get too close to my inner ear, so any head movement for the next 6 hours had a nasty result. Too bad the violence of it all moved the eardrum replacement position, and I permanently lost a lot of hearing because of it. Too bad too that I later found out from another ENT that the whole surgery was incredibly inappropriate, something I hope our future world of better managed care keeps from happening to someone else.

    On the potentially good news front, the DDS I work for picked up on some odd clues and diagnosed a potential case of acromegaly yesterday, hopefully soon enough so this bright young kid doesn’t end up looking like Andre the Giant or Jaws from the old Bond movies. Also hopefully soon enough that if it is being caused by a pituitary tumor, it can be safely treated. All because we take incredibly good first exam notes at this location, something I very rarely see at any office I have temped at. Too bad funding cuts will probably eliminate the student dental clinic next academic year…

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @StringOnAStick:

    Another famous actor with acromegaly: Rondo Hatton (though his face is more famous than any of his movies). It’s always been said that his case was caused by chemical weapons exposure in WWI, though it’s usually a pituitary problem. Since those chemical weapons have been banned since WWI, it’s possible that they could trigger pituitary problems.

  52. 52.

    StringOnAStick

    @Mnemosyne: This young man realized that suddenly he had an underbite, when he previously didn’t. One of the aspects of acromegaly is the lower jaw goes through growth spurts as excess human growth hormone is excreted by the pituitary gland (as caused by a usually benign pituitary tumor). The way the teeth in his upper and lower jaw fit together had totally changed over the last year, and we had the records to prove it. He thought it was 3rd molars making his jaw change, but he only has 1 wisdom tooth and it wasn’t the source of any movement due to it’s fairly normal position.

    There are a lot of medical conditions that can express themselves within the oral cavity, so you take serious intake notes on everyone even though 99.9% of people will never have something show up here before their doctor sees it or they start feeling bad. This case means this young man can have a fairly normal life because of the early diagnosis, and that is very gratifying!

  54. 54.

    Aleta

    In Maine they used to say that in the fall your blood is changing from thin to thicker, and that makes you feel tired. I don’t think the blood part is proven true, but I do think that the changes in the angle and length of the daylight have effects on our glands and on energy-related metabolism for some of us.

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