Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Second rate reporter says what?

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

šŸŽ¶ Those boots were made for mockinā€™ šŸŽµ

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Be a wild strawberry.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

When I decide to be condescending, you wonā€™t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

You canā€™t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

When I was faster i was always behind.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

So many bastards, so little time.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

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Open Thread

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Here’s an interesting exercise while the blog’s proprietors try to keep afloat during the academic silly season: come up with one time that you have been completely, embarrassingly wrong about something. Ironic evasion, e.g. “I was arong to give Bush the benefit of the doubt” won’t cut it unless you really did and you were next to insufferable about it.

For me the first thing that comes to mind was my reaction to the tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in London. Call me gullible to take the original police report at face value, on top of which I was in a super-cranky mood that morning and feeling unusally sympathetic to authority so I forgot to even hedge my condemnation with the usual qualifications and disclaimers. Eesh. I don’t know how the opinion certification board let me go on blog commenting after that.

New rule for this thread only – commenters have to lead off with a suitably embarrassing goof of his or her own. Then you’re free to mock me, John, each other or chat about the day’s news. Should be entertaining.

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A Small Step

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We never get any good news around here, so here is a small piece:

The cost of treating children infected with H.I.V. and AIDS is poised to plummet next year, under a deal announced today between two Indian drugmakers and former President Bill Clintonā€™s foundation.

Cipla and Ranbaxy Laboratories agreed to make 19 different anti-retroviral drugs designed for children available at an average price of 16 cents a day, or $60 a year, which is about 45 percent lower than the lowest current price, the Clinton Foundation said in a statement.

Because not everyone has access to the current lowest price, the plan will actually translate into a four- to six-fold cost reduction for many children, said Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa.

The prices will be available to 62 developing countries and will lead to the treatment of an additional 100,000 people in 2007, the statement said.

Good news, indeed.

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The Scandal That Wasn’t

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Until now I have passed on the apparently scintillating question of who Nancy Pelosi would pick to chair the Defense Committee for two reasons. First, the idea that she could only pick Jane Harman or Alcee Hastings seemed silly. Second, I don’t understand getting worked up about something that Pelosi hasn’t done yet. Well, I guess I was right. Alcee Hastings won’t be picked for reasons that should be obvious to everybody and, via two excellent posts by Glenn Greenwald, Jane Harman has already met the post’s limit of four terms.

Look at it this way – the GOP’s work output demonstrates that they never liked the act of governing very much. Despite their rhetoric about the “party of no” and whatnot, Republicans really thrive on ginned-up scandals and phony outrage. Those slow or new enough to disagree can kindly revisit how many hours of testimony the Republican Congress spent determining whether the Clinton White House used its Christmas card list for fundraising. FOX News, the Goldberg clan, Drudge and most of our luminaries in the rightwing New Media made their name by throwing a three-year epileptic fit over a blowjob in the Oval Office. Casting wild aspersions at powerful Democrats is their comfort zone.

With Democrats back in the driver’s seat the GOP and its trained pets will get back to doing what they do best. This fabricated flap over the Defense Committee seat will be only the first of many, many, many Drudge-fueled scandals that amount to less than nothing once the smoke grenades have run out of fuel. I guess one could ask whether the clenis years taught the major news outlets anything about playing the sap, if one wanted to get a reputation for not paying attention. In reality the stupidity hasn’t even warmed up yet.

Postscript: Those scandals which don’t amount to nothing, e.g. which have some meat on their bones, will and should be taken seriously. For example William Jefferson, who bloggers across the lib spectrum are working their ass off to unseat. But count on acres and acres of flak for every one that matters.

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In other news the pace has picked up here in the salt mines of my academic research lab, which will probably cut into my time to troll the internet for good material and blog it. In the meantime I recommend giving John the usual hard time as well as Steve Benen’s excellent work at the Carpetbagger Report. More than anyone else I usually check there before fleshing out a post because odds are that Steve already has it up. Thus my posts tend to have a lot of Carpetbagger links. I don’t know to what degree his commenters have caught on to our trademarked brand of spoofing (something in the water around here?) but try not to drive them too crazy.

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Turkey Day

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Due to holiday-related stuff I plan be off the grid for most of tomorrow, and if you have the option I recommend that you all do the same. That big lamp with a yellow tint and no diffuser? That’s the sun.

Or chat amongst yourselves. I plan on dining with some French friends of my wife so I have very little idea what I’m getting into. Maybe they’ll do Turkey, maybe goose, maybe (I hope) one of those rib racks with the little hat on each rib. If it’s anything like the mammoth Christmas dinner that my wife and pere – in-law cooked up for my folks in 2001 then I may not wake up until Saturday.

Treat this as an open thread for the holidays, holiday travel, the latest movies, classic movies, your superior taste in music, football. Whatever. Travel safe.

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Friday Wine Blogging

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This is getting ridiculous:

A drug already shown to reverse the effects of obesity in mice and make them live longer has now been shown to increase their endurance as well.

[…] An ordinary laboratory mouse will run one kilometer on a treadmill before collapsing from exhaustion. But mice given resveratrol, a minor component of red wine and other foods, run twice as far. They also have energy-charged muscles and a reduced heart rate, just as trained athletes do, according to an article published online in Cell by Johan Auwerx and colleagues at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Illkirch, France.

ā€œResveratrol makes you look like a trained athlete without the training,ā€ Dr. Auwerx (pronounced OH-wer-ix) said in an interview.

Let’s recap – the demonstrated effects of resveratrol include cancer resistance, prolonged lifespan, mitigating diabetes and other effects of morbid obesity, fighting diseases both inherited, acquired and infectious and now it can make you a champion athlete without training. Plus it has no toxic effects at any concentration yet measured. Ye gods. The FDA has not yet classified resveratrol as a drug so numerous manufacturers offer it as a nutritional supplement, with all the attendant upsides and downsides. For example herbal supplements often contain little to no of what they advertise plus shocking quantities of contaminants and heavy metals. That’s right libertarians, the FDA does serve a purpose.

Dr. David Sinclair, the Harvard researcher who discovered resveratrol, recommends the brand Longevinex for reasons that have to do with the compound’s instability in the presence of oxygen. Alternatively Longevinex might have offered the most lucrative sponsorship package. Update: yes to the former story, no to the latter. As with everything on the unregulated market, caveat emptor.

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If you plan to get resveratrol the natural way, even if the dosage is a bit low, try the Menage a Trois red, a blend of Zin, Merlot and Cab Franc from the Folie a Deux winery in St. Helena, CA. Buttery smooth, a touch of spice and an aftertaste that reminded me of chocolate. It has that goes-with-anything character that makes Merlot a hit in America but with a pleasant depth of character from the blend. Buy it not long before you plan to drink it since the flipside of buttery smoothness is very little tannins or acidity.

***Update***

You probably want to know more about resveratrol. Read the rest of my coverage here. Read about obesity and diabetes here, or skim the multitudinous sources at Wikipedia.

***Update 2***

Gazillions of good resveratrol references here.

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