Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

No one could have predicted…

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

The revolution will be supervised.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Petty moves from a petty man.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

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Stupid American Month

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August.

Every August something happens that reminds me just how stupid America has become. This month is full of fresh reminders of our dwindling National intelligence.

It has traditionally become the month to celebrate how stupid America has become. It is the month when stupidity in America goes on full display with a vengence.

It is the month where we learned about shark attacks and Gary Condit while George Bush ignored a security warning titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US.” It is the month where wingnutopia talking points for invading Iraq was manufactured and tested. It is the month that Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began running ads about John Kerry while the rest of wingnutopia went crazy about the flip-flop meme. It was the month of Katrina. It was the month when Karl Rove convinced most of the media that he had “the math”. It was the month when the Palin traveling carnival of hucksters was introduced to America. It was the month of death panels. It was the month the Tea Party sprang forth from well fertilized astroturf. Now it is the month to worry about secret moooslims building things or terrorist cell groups of anchor babies. And always it is a month where the dumbest mother fuckers in America try to drive our National discourse with fear, ignorance and hatred.

The funny (and tragic) thing is that this shit works over and over again because we live in a pretty stupid Country or at the very least we live in a Nation of people who fear to tell the idiots to shut the fuck up. Worse, a lot of folks who should know better take leave of their senses in August and voice support for the latest fad of idiocy (and yes, Howard, I’m looking at you).

So, why not officially make August Stupid American Month. It already is the month when we are asked to care about every crazy conspiracy theory, every half-baked idea and every bit of idiotic drivel falling from the lips of fools who walk among us. Perhaps if we officially recognize all this crazy talk as the babbling of the stupid then the Country could get the crazy shit out of our collective system.

Of course, OTOH, the clowns from crazy town could just take over and make every month Stupid American Month. And perhaps, they already have.

Cheers

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Open Thread: ‘Medical Miracle’ of the Week

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Study touts horse tranquilizer Ketamine as ‘magic’ anti-depressant:

Ketamine, a general anesthetic usually administered to children and pets but perhaps best known as a horse tranquilizer, is also highly effective in low doses as an anti-depressant, according a study published Thursday.
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Researchers at Yale University wrote in the August 20 issue of the journal Science that unlike most anti-depressants on the market which can take weeks to take full effect ketamine can begin to counter depression in hours.
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“It’s like a magic drug — one dose can work rapidly and last for seven to 10 days,” said Ronald Duman, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Yale and senior author of the study.
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The researchers noted that ketamine was tested as a rapid treatment for people with suicidal thoughts. Traditional anti-depressants can take several weeks to take effect, they noted.
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The researchers found that ketamine improves depression-like behavior in rats by restoring connections between brain cells damaged by chronic stress.

Whatever the cost benefits of giving depressed individuals a shot of “Special K” as an alternative to long-term therapy, I wanted to highlight the “chronic stress” issue. For all the attention paid to the delicate feelings of Wall Street banksters and other highly-paid criminals, being poor is one of the main causes of chronic stress, as well as contributing to many other sources (untreated medical conditions, bad nutrition, family dysfunction, dangerous living environments). And chronic stress will shorten your lifespan even when it doesn’t lead directly to suicide. But I can confidently predict that this study will lead to a spate of thumb-sucking (finger-wagging) articles about the “dangers” of allowing people who can’t afford six weeks at Hazelden to “self-medicate”. And a bunch of pharmaceutical funding diverted to coming up with a “boutique” (i.e., patentable) version of ketamine that can be marketed to Medicare users as a longterm mood improver…

(h/t General Stuck for the link)

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Food Bubbles & Starvation by Broker

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I never got around to finishing what was intended to be a thoughtful commentary on this Harper’s article, but since John posted about this earlier, I’m going to give you all the link, at least. Frederick Kaufman, “The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it”:

Agriculture, rooted as it is in the rhythms of reaping and sowing, had not traditionally engaged the attention of Wall Street bankers, whose riches did not come from the sale of real things like wheat or bread but from the manipulation of ethereal concepts like risk and collateralized debt. But in 1991 nearly everything else that could be recast as a financial abstraction had already been considered. Food was pretty much all that was left. And so with accustomed care and precision, Goldman’s analysts went about transforming food into a concept. They selected eighteen commodifiable ingredients and contrived a financial elixir that included cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, hogs, and a variety or two of wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known thenceforward as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. Then they began to offer shares.
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As was usually the case, Goldman’s product flourished. The prices of cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, and wheat began to rise, slowly at first, and then rapidly. And as more people sank money into Goldman’s food index, other bankers took note and created their own food indexes for their own clients. Investors were delighted to see the value of their venture increase, but the rising price of breakfast, lunch, and dinner did not align with the interests of those of us who eat. And so the commodity index funds began to cause problems.
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Wheat was a case in point. North America, the Saudi Arabia of cereal, sends nearly half its wheat production overseas, and an obscure syndicate known as the Minneapolis Grain Exchange remains the supreme price-setter for the continent’s most widely exported wheat, a high-protein variety called hard red spring. Other varieties of wheat make cake and cookies, but only hard red spring makes bread. Its price informs the cost of virtually every loaf on earth.
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Open Thread: Cats & Dogs

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From commentor Phillygirl:

Here’s the timorous but loving benny, taking in the sights of my little back yard. one advantage of having an old, fat cat is that he can’t jump over the wall. he is forever safe.
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Senior catz are deserving and grateful, too. I got my Benny from some rescue people who were at their wits’ end. Benny, age and history kind of mysterious, performed miserably on adoption days, cowering in the back of his cage and trembling when touched. Also, he was fat, and thus, like chunkier senior humans, not so visually appealing. No matter! After hiding under a rug (!) in my house for a week, he slowly began turning into a pet. Within a few months, he was a cuddler, a licker, and a belly-rub enthusiast. Mostly, these guys just need to feel safe. Then they will reward you richly, with devotion and sometimes with small, dead rodents. Get to yer shelter tomorrow.

(Since I a full-figured ginger of a certain age, I think that Benny is a fine, handsome fellow!)

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And a bonus story from commentor JCT:

I’m reading this crashed out in our RV with my own pack of beagies. We actually bought the RV because we couldn’t bear to leave them behind…
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We rescued our first beagle mix a few years ago – supposedly for our young son, but Shadow bonded to my husband and we decided to adopt a sister for her. I went to a rescue day at a vet to get a young beagle, only to fall in love with a scrawny, scarred old girl named Trixie. No one was paying any attention to her, but my daughter noticed that as Trixie walked up to the puppy cages they all ran to her like she was their mother- no matter what the breed. When we asked about her the rescue folks were so thrilled, they thought she would never be picked. She had been found by the side of the road, apparently abandoned by one of the fucking puppy mills in the area. It is hard to describe how beat-up she looked, when I brought my husband out to pick her up he looked at me like I had lost my mind. She was of course, a fabulous dog, adored everyone, slept curled up with my son every night in their private ”beagle pile” and just adored chew toys – I think the poor sweetheart had never had toys before, she used to hide them in a pile under our bed. 3 months of love and joy later she became a little short of breath and by the end of the month we had to have her put down while I held her because she had metastatic mammary gland tumors thanks to her previous life as a puppy machine. For months we were finding hidden toys. 8 years later we still have her purple leash and collar. Just last night the whole family was talking about her, while we were surrounded by our current beagles – both of whom sleep in our bed, one with her head on the pillow like a baby.

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Second acts in American lives

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Peter Beinart continues “his ongoing transformation from TNR Seriousness Guardian into shrill liberal blogger“:

Remember when George W. Bush and his neoconservative allies used to say that the “war on terror” was a struggle on behalf of Muslims, decent folks who wanted nothing more than to live free like you and me? Remember when Karen Hughes paid millions to produce glitzy videos of Muslim Americans testifying about how free they were to practice their religion in the USA? Remember Bush’s second inaugural, when he said “America’s ideal of freedom” is “sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran?”

[….]

So please, no more talk about those idealistic neoconservatives who are willing to expend blood and treasure so Afghans and Iraqis can live free. People in Basra and Kandahar had better hope that America’s counterinsurgency warriors create a society in which they can practice their religion free of intimidation and insult. Because it’s now clear they can’t do so on the lower tip of the island of Manhattan.

It’s possible someone linked to this already here, but it is the best piece of writing I’ve seen on this subject.

If Peter Beinart can turn it around like this, there’s hope for everyone.

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Open Thread: Senior Pet Rescue

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From commentor Tony S:

My wife and I were dog owners as kids. When we moved to our house here in Peekskill in 1999, the place came with a dog. The place was an estate sale, and we insisted the super-elder beagle, Gypsy, be part of the package…
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Since then, we’ve tried to adopt older dogs whenever possible. We find them much easier to deal with than puppies, and quite grateful. We’ve had 11 dogs in 10 years. People ask us how we can deal with the short time we have with the senior dogs, but it’s much more painful thinking of them trapped in some shelter somewhere, or put to death simply because they’re not wanted.
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Here’s a pic of the current crowd. From left to right, they’re:
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Snarls Barkly, our most recent arrival, who is an estimated 9 years old and was left in front of a police precinct in the South Bronx at 4:00 am on the night of February 14th in a condition the ASPA described as “filthy,” with a broken tail, infected ears and a large tumor on one leg. It was three weeks before he would get on our bed; he spent most his time until then lying on piles of leaves in our backyard. Now he spends 90% of his time cuddled between our pillows.
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Field Marshal Montgomery Marshal Fields. Monty was in a family where the father died suddenly when his replacement heart valve failed. He went from having run of the house to being locked in a cage 14 hours a day, and cracked up in the process. He has papers of some kind, and is our only purebred. His favorite game is “I love you, don’t touch me. OK, now you can pet me. But I’ll scream.”
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Twinkle Toes. Twinkles was found tied to a lamp post on our city’s main street. She’d been there so long her paws were bloody. By virtue of seniority, she is our home’s alpha, and she knows it. She is also a differently abled puppy. She must have been hit by a car at some point. Her front paw is held together with a bolt, and her back leg is held together with a wire. Must have cost a bunch to fix her, and she wound up on the street.
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Jessicur Lynch. You can guess the time we got Jessicur. Her breed was listed as a mountain cur. She’s our guest terrier. She was sent to kill shelter in West Virginia for slaughtering chickens. Now she likes to leave dead mice as gifts for us on our bed. She’s the youngest dog we’ve adopted, and one of the craziest. I have the scars to prove it.
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When people are adopting dogs, they should really think of seniors. They’ve wound up abandoned through no fault of their own and deserve homes.

(Keep those photos & stories coming, folks — we need the respite! And why have I not received any cat pictures yet?)

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Can I Reserve the name Hugh E. Rection?

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Whatever:

Eric Schmidt suggested that young people should be entitled to change their identity to escape their misspent youth, which is now recorded in excruciating detail on social networking sites such as Facebook.

“I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,” Mr Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal.

In an interview Mr Schmidt said he believed that every young person will one day be allowed to change their name to distance themselves from embarrasssing photographs and material stored on their friends’ social media sites.

How about we start judging people on performance, rather than their off-hours antics or whether or not they are the demon sperm of Tim Russert? Then no one needs to change their name and we can still let our freak flag fly.

Although that may get in the way of our beltway “meritocracy” and our fucked up concepts of what is acceptable, wherein it is ok to be in favor of bombing the shit out of people if you go to church once a week, but you are an unemployable wretch if you smoke a joint or publicly have an unorthodox thought….

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