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Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / This!

This!

by | 125 Comments

This post is in: 

I’m referring to what John said here.  I literally have nothing more to add.

Today is my 45th birthday, so I took the day off, and my daughter, who is playing hooky from school, and my son and I are going to lunch, and then I’m going to try to get some stuff done in my garage workshop, but it’s only about 35 degrees right now, so I may just bundle up with Turn: Washington’s Spies on demand.  If you haven’t been watching this series, it’s worth your time, both as an espionage series and a period series.  The first season is available On Demand and on the AMC website for free.  The second season starts in April.  I’m up for a new job at work.  I have an interview scheduled next week.  It’s right up my alley and I’m hopeful and excited.

 

Open Thread.

 

Reader Interactions

125Comments

  1. 1.

    japa21

    35 degrees and you have to bundle up. I’d be tempted to put on my shorts, considering it was -4 when I got up this morning.

    More importantly, happy birthday you youngster. Enjoy the day and your kids.

    And good luck on the interview.

  4. 4.

    rikyrah

    In Facebook Posts, Congressman Aaron Schock’s Press Secretary Compared African Americans To Zoo Animals

    by Josh Israel Posted on February 5, 2015 at 9:03 am

    In a series of Facebook posts obtained by ThinkProgress, the senior adviser for policy and communications to Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) posted racial comments and endorsed gentrification of his neighborhood.

    Benjamin Cole, a former Baptist pastor and energy industry spokesman, posted a series of videos and comments on October 13, 2013 mocking two African Americans outside his DC apartment. In the first, he compared them to animals escaping from the National Zoo engaged in “mating rituals.” That message included a video of a woman, shouting and seemingly engaged in an argument with someone not visible as she walked. In each of his posts, he used the hashtag “#gentrifytoday.”

    http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/02/05/3619395/aaron-schock-communications-racist/

  6. 6.

    BGinCHI

    Happy birthday, sooner!

    Have you seen “Fury”? Can’t remember whether we talked about that ages ago. Finally saw it this past week.

  10. 10.

    Lee

    Happy Birthday!!

    I looked at that series and was hoping it was going to be good. I’ll give it a run through on your recommendation.

    As for the Brian Williams thing. Meh, don’t care. People’s memory is notoriously prone to mistakes. The only thing that seems a bit irregular is that it appears he told the same story in 2003 (not sure if accurate or not). If that is the case, it should have been a little fresher & accurate.

    Either way, don’t care.

  12. 12.

    cahuenga

    I can see memory getting muddled over time. But for the life of me I cannot ever see imagining I was on an aircraft that was hit by an RPG when I wasn’t. I’m pretty sure something like that would be indelible.

  13. 13.

    Pogonip

    Happy birthday to you!

    John mentioned how civilians would think they’d been nuked if they were in a combat plane. As it happens, the Air Force Museum, not far from Dayton, Ohio, has an exhibit that simulates combat flight. It spins and shakes and whirls you around. I had to close my eyes or I’d have thrown up.

  21. 21.

    Aimai

    45? Sniff. It seems like just 10 years ago that you were thirty five. I remember you from when you first started posting–was it dailykos? Congratulations!

  33. 33.

    muddy

    Happy birthday! I was just thinking of you a couple of days ago and wondered how you were. Must have been ripples in the universe.

    It’s been so cold here that yesterday when it was in the upper 20s everyone was walking around with open jackets and no hats and gloves. It was just a taunting though, today it’s colder again.

  35. 35.

    Roger Moore

    @catclub:

    Abraham Lincoln Feb 9 if I misremember correctly.

    Also, too, Charles Darwin. It’s amazing to think that Lincoln and Darwin were born within hours of each other. They made a big deal about it on “The Writers Almanac” on the 200th anniversary of their shared birthday. We tend not to think of them as great authors, but they both depended critically on being outstanding writers for their success in their respective fields.

  37. 37.

    Seanly

    Happy birthday, Sooner!

    Sorry about the beatdown my Clemson team gave y’all.

    Please forgive the long post, but I’ve been waiting for an open thread:
    Some of you may remember that I had posted several times last year about my wife and her treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. She was diagnosed over a year ago and underwent a successful induction treatment in Boise where we live. Since she was positive for the Philadelphia Chromosome, the doctors her to get an allogenic blood stem cell transfusion (previously called bone marrow transplant). Unfortunately, in Boise, they can’t do the allogenic transfusions.

    Be The Match found two 9 out of 10 matches within a couple of weeks. She has family in Nashville and Vanderbilt is not only one of the best places in the country for the procedure and covered by our insurance, but our insurance gave a stipend to help with the travel costs. Wife flew to TN in mid-July and got the transfusion in early September. The day of the transfusion is called Day Zero. The big concerns are now not the cancer, but infections from the new & suppressed immune system as well as from the graph vs host disease (GVHD where the new blood supply and body fight it out). She has a new blood type and her blood is now genetically different.

    At Day 100, they usually transition the patient to long term transplant care. My wife was doing very well with no additional hospitalizations for GVHD. I went to visit her when I could. Around Thanksgiving, she talked the transplant team into releasing her to go back to Boise 2 weeks before Day 100.

    Unfortunately, she developed a severe lung infection on Thanksgiving. She ended up going to the ICU and being in a medically induced coma. I had to fly back to TN in early December thinking I was going to be saying goodbye to my unconscious wife. Several doctors told me that they had done all they could and that they were out of options if she didn’t stabilize.

    They never identified the cause, but the lung biopsy saved her life IMHO. They held off doing that since even minor surgery is very dangerous for her on several levels. However, a lung biopsy has a drain tube to take any fluids off the lung. It also serves to help keep one of the lungs inflated. They put another drain tube in the other side. Then since she’d be intubated for over a week, they did a tracheostomy to get the tube out of her throat and reduce her sedation. With a trach tube, you can’t talk until you can tolerate a Passey-Muir valve.

    She began to turn around. I had to fly home before she fully regained consciousness, but returned at Christmas when she was transferred to an acute care facility. Since she was bedridden for 10 days, she lost a lot of weight and suffered a lot of atrophy. In the few days I was with her she was beginning to be able to move around. Even her throat muscles had atrophied so she need to work on swallowing exercises before they could try the Passey-Muir valve. I flew home on the 30th. A couple of days later her swallowing improved enough that they put her on the speaking valve.

    By late January, she had improved enough that they removed the trach tube and transferred her to a rehabilitation hospital. There she got more intensive physical and occupational therapy. Last weekend I went for another visit and was able to be with her when she was released from the hospital. She’s down to only using oxygen at night and, while still very weak, can now walk short distances.

    The transplant team wants her to stay until her 6 month checkup (Day 180 I guess). She’s back at her parents’ little house. She’ll do out-patient PT. A doctor told her she might never recover enough lung function to run, but she should be able to do most normal activities. We think now that she’ll be back home in 5 to 7 weeks.

    As with any couple married for a long time, we’ve had different ebbs and flows in our relationship. When this all started in January 2014, I didn’t think I had the strength to be there for her. This last year, even with her gone since July has strengthened our relationship. We did find that we had more friends than we thought in Boise (being still new to the area). Her family and high school friends back in Nashville have been a big blessing too.

    I had shared some of my worst moments in early December with the group here. Thought it only fair that I also share some of the good news.

  41. 41.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Happy birthday, Sooner! Have a great day with your offspring, and best of luck with the interview.

  43. 43.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Seanly:

    Wonderful!

    So what if she never regains her former strength? You still have her. Congratulations to you both!

  49. 49.

    flukebucket

    Now I guess I can say I share a birthday with Roger Staubach, Hank Aaron and Soonergrunt! Happy Birthday to us!

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    @Seanly:
    I’m glad to hear that your wife is doing better. Secondary infections like hers are really scary, and my understanding is that they’re actually more dangerous than the direct effects of the transplant. That’s why you want to go to a major hospital like Vanderbilt rather than staying in Boise. Your local hospital probably could have handled the transplant itself- the procedure is surprisingly simple- but wouldn’t have been able to save her from the post-transplant infection. Also, FWIW, GVHD is short for graft versus host disease, not graph.

    P.S. I hope you take advantage of the chance to contact your donor once the one year mandatory confidentiality period is over. Most of us want to know who we’ve donated to, and it’s a chance to have a new relative you never knew before.

  54. 54.

    Elizabelle

    Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal leaving her job. Fallout from the Sony computer hack that put Seth Rogen’s “The Interview” in the news late last year.

  57. 57.

    Origuy

    Happy Birthday, Soonergrunt.

    Congratulations to Seanly and wife. Someday I’ll post about the last five months my housemate has spent in and out of hospitals after her spinal fusion. Not as bad as your experiences though.

  62. 62.

    Seanly

    @Roger Moore:

    Yes, graft, not graph. I’m an engineer so I think in terms of graph paper… well, we use the graph paper in Dungeons & Dragons too…

    All we know so far is that the donor was a male and had recently traveled overseas (my wife had to sign a release acknowledging she was okay receiving blood stem cells based on that).

    She was allowed to write a letter thanking him as long as it didn’t contain any personal identifiers. I think she’ll probably want to contact him once the year is up.

  64. 64.

    SRW1

    Happy 45th repeat and may there be at least as many to come.

    Knocking on wood for the upcoming interview.

  65. 65.

    PurpleGirl

    Happy Birthday Soonergrunt and best wishes for many more. Good luck on the interview. Hope you have a good lunch with the Soonerkids.

  66. 66.

    Mnemosyne (iPhone)

    @Elizabelle:

    We had a vendor come in a couple of weeks ago whose husband works for Sony, so their information was compromised. Her full passport is online now (I think she’s a Canadian citizen) and they’ve already had at least one fraudulent credit card taken out in their name. So, yes, the whole thing sucks bigtime for all of the cogs at Sony Pictures.

  74. 74.

    Felonius Monk

    and I’m hopeful and excited

    Good frames of mind to be in.

    Happy Birthday, Sooner. Enjoy your day.

    I can’t remember the last time our temp was as high as 35F. Could be -20F here tonight.

  75. 75.

    Amir Khalid

    Feliz cumpleaños, señor Soonergrunt.
    Herzlichen Glückwünsch auf deinem Geburtstag!
    Bon anniversaire!
    Selamat harijadi!

  76. 76.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rikyrah: Aaron Schock’s top staffer Benjamin Cole has other thinks as well

    Cole wrote that he “thinks they should build a mosque on White House grounds” in a post dated October 2010, according to Buzzfeed.
    When a commenter said that he failed to understand outrage about a proposed mosque at the World Trade Center site, Cole replied “I wasn’t talking about the Ground Zero mosque, I just think it would be nice for the President to have his own house of worship, since he’s not been able to find one suitable in DC since 2004 when he moved here.”

  80. 80.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Amir Khalid: And he’s a pastor, too.
    Good lord. Sort of pun sort of intended.

    @SatanicPanic: I’m sure Aaron Schock was and is totally unaware of his staffer’s ignorance and racist spew on facebook

  82. 82.

    Elizabelle

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Guessing Pastor Cole will have more time to spend with his family and any Christianist religious followers soon.

    RE Schrock: I laughed to hear his interior designer’s company was Euro Trash. Only clever note in the whole escapade.

  83. 83.

    Couldn't Stand the Weather

    Happy B-Day, Sooner. Good luck with the job interview.

    As for the Very Reverend Ben Cole, he sounds like Fred Phelps with the usual grafted-on winger sense of humor. As another commentor said, these idjits are who we thought they were (someone really oughta pay Dennis Green for bringing that phrase back).

  84. 84.

    Elizabelle

    I see Pastor Benjamin Cole is Schrock’s Communications Director. (Per TPM.) Much like that ditz, Liz something, who lost her job over haranguing about Malia and Sasha’s behavior and attire at the White House Turkey Pardoning of 2014.

    They create their own reality. It’s a stupid, ugly little reality.

  90. 90.

    Fred Dickinson

    The 2016 Election is pretty much set now: Hillary vs. Jeb. The capitalists and their media lapdogs will see to that. We are witnessing the final senility of the bourgeoisie . Nothing illustrates this better – and by the fact that the only Party that matters is the Property Party – than the inevitability of Bush vs. Clinton.

    The whole rotten system of late capitalism needs to come crashing the fuck down.But many of you will dutifully vote for Hillary! , tweedle dum over tweedle dee , licking the jackboots of your corporatist masters.

    Both parties are out to ass rape the working class – the democrats just use a condom and a little lube.

  95. 95.

    Fred Dickinson

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Ralph Nader is a timid, reformist fuckstick who thinks 20th Century Social Democracy is still viable – it isn’t. The only reason the capitalists ever agreed to it was because the Soviet Union made them shit their pants in fear. Now that it’s gone they let the mask slip, bent the worker over a pool table and commenced said ass raping .

  96. 96.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Villago Delenda Est: I’m gonna start a draft Michael Moore movement. We’re gonna feel and shout our way to justice. Maybe get Cornel West as Veep. Or Hamsher. Is she still a thing?

  97. 97.

    Roger Moore

    @Fred Dickinson:

    The 2016 Election is pretty much set now: Hillary vs. Jeb. The capitalists and their media lapdogs will see to that.

    Just as they ensured that the 2008 election was Hillary versus Rudy. They are calling what they want inevitable in the hopes that it will become inevitable, but that doesn’t mean the world will cooperate.

  99. 99.

    Tree With Water

    45 was the age I first began noticing more obituaries of people my age. Happy Birthday!

  100. 100.

    Fred Dickinson

    @Roger Moore:

    The ruling class greatly preferred Obama in 2008 to put a smiling black face on the putrid ,stinking, blood stained monstrosity of Late Capitalism and USian war mongering around the globe.

  104. 104.

    jl

    @Roger Moore: I agree, the media can do their mean HS punk gossip and horse race tout acts all they want over their favorites, but the caucuses and primaries may surprise them, to their consternation.

    I think it is also true that even if someone better than HRC runs (and ‘better’ mainlhy means ‘can win against whatever GOP nightmare is coughs up’) or GOP coughs up some nightmare other than Jeb!, that will not disprove that we live in late stage rotten crony capitalism, that will either be reformed soon, or lurch into ever deeper crises.

  106. 106.

    Dee Loralei

    Happy Birthday Sooner! And everyone else who celebrates in Feb., including my dad.

    Seanly, that is such wonderful news about your wife. I hope her recovery continues apace and she can be back home with you soon.

  107. 107.

    Roger Moore

    @Seanly:

    All we know so far is that the donor was a male and had recently traveled overseas (my wife had to sign a release acknowledging she was okay receiving blood stem cells based on that).

    I’m surprised that they didn’t at least give you the donor’s age; they normally give the donor the patient’s age as well as what disease they’re getting the transplant for. I think they’ll also tell you what country they’re in if they’re in another country, but I don’t know that one for sure. And from a donor’s perspective, I think the one year confidentiality wait is frustrating but ultimately a good idea.

    The really good part is that the transplant really is a cure, not just a treatment. We have an annual transplant reunion at my work where recipients, and some donors, get together to celebrate their new lives. Our first successful patient kept coming back for more than 35 years, and it was a car accident that got him in the end rather than cancer.

  109. 109.

    jl

    More evidence that bothsidesdoit on vaccination debate. Fox News legal analyst, BS revisionist and butt ignorant historian, and noted expert epidemiologist, immunologist, and public health and medical expert Andrew Napolitano slams the tyranny of compulsory vaccinations.

    Fox Analyst Says Mandatory Vaccines Are Tyranny: ‘WHO OWNS YOUR BODY?’

    ‘ Napolitano went on to say that “the states, and not the federal government, are the guardians of public health,” and that under the Constitution (and the Declaration of Independence) people are free to reject “scientific orthodoxy.” ‘

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/andrew-napolitano-rand-paul-vaccines-tyranny

    How ignorant and stupid do people have to be to believe this stuff, and same question for Napolitano for spouting it. Vaccinaiton laws are handled by the states now, and is there any federal legislation proposed for mandatory vaccinations.

    And I am sure Napolitano knows what he is talking about wrt to Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Being a BS revisionist Civil War historian, he surely has read all the ringing denunciations of creeping public health tyranny written by Jefferson, Madison and John Adams as they watched several states pass mandatory vaccination laws in the first decades of the 1800s.

    Actually, that is a trick statement, Napolitano HAS read all of them, because they do not exist..

    How many crazed liberals have spouted anti-vaxxer BS? Maher, the comic and on some topics a total crank? Who else? Seriously, I would like to know if any other liberal pundits and journalists have said any dumb stuff on vaccinations.

  110. 110.

    Fred Dickinson

    Let me ask y’all a question : are you ready for some Marxism?

    We need to move beyond bourgeoisie methods like elections and move to direct action, I.e. Occupy but better organized and even more radical , a real progressive movement for people’s control of the economy, a massive general strike should be the end goal.

  113. 113.

    Suzanne

    @Fred Dickinson: It’s really charming how you use “ass raping” as a metaphor for “having a president I don’t like”.

    One of these things is not like the other, la la la….

  116. 116.

    chopper

    @Seanly:

    That’s some good-ass news. You sound like you’re doing a model job of keeping it together all things considered.

  120. 120.

    satby

    And dead thread, but Happiest of Birthdays to you Soonergrunt!
    Good luck on the interview, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.

  123. 123.

    JR in WV

    @Seanly:
    Congrats on your wife’s recovery from her medical treatment/disease! My wife recovered from septic shock (odds 70:30 against!) after 21 days on a vent in MICU, a collapsed lung, surgery to repair that lung, discovery that it was necroptic, treated, physical therapy, hard work back at home, and mostly complete recovery. So I hope your wife is able to travel with you to wherever you guys want to go!

    Happy birfdays to all the February BJers! Sooner, good luck with the interview, don’t worry about it before it happens!

    Hey, Fred: Fuck you with a rusty crosscut saw! I met Gus Hall a long time ago, didn’t know he would be there, wasn’t really sure who he was at the time, wasn’t impressed with his persona at all. And he has you beat by a country mile, because he actually worked hard for what he believed in, and you are just a troll!!

    Back home after a family business trip to North Carolina, it was beautiful sunny spring-like weather for the whole trip, until today driving home, when it was 21 degrees and windy like hell!!

    Happy almost spring, all!

  125. 125.

    Anne Laurie

    Very late to the thread, dear Soonergrunt, but Happy Belated Birthday!

    I find it comforting, the older I get (and I’m old enough to be your mother, just barely) to think back to all the times I honestly never expected to make it this far. Bet you did some of that, too.

    And best of luck regarding the possible new job!

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