Folks, Thanksgiving is coming. And the greatest act of Thanks that you can Give this season is to sneak down into your family room when everyone else has gone to sleep (like after 9:30) and turn on the child lock on the Fox News channel.
— Siobhan Thompson (@vornietom) November 7, 2018
you get extra points if you do this after your parents paid for your flights home lol
— Siobhan Thompson (@vornietom) November 7, 2018
Depending on one’s personal situation, this is either a very short or an infinitely long week. At least there will be pie!
It’s 2018 and America is getting dunked on by
*reads fine print*
Finland#haravointi pic.twitter.com/F4F2d4MLcS
— Eric Haywood (@EricHaywood) November 19, 2018
"You gotta take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest,very important…I was with the President of Finland…he called it a forest nation and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problem." pic.twitter.com/f6aD37B3KA
— ?ealfarmacist (@real_farmacist) November 17, 2018
Here's what I believe. On Sunday nights, there is a conference call with every head of government all around the world and they bet each other on who can come up with the dumbest thing that they can get the president* to believe.
Finland wins the money this week.— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 18, 2018
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
NotMax
What’re the odds this year’s pardoned turkeys are named Adolf and Eva?
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
sukabi
@NotMax: I’m betting they will be named John Barron, Jason Miller, David Dennison, Donald Trump and Ivanka
Schlemazel
@NotMax:
This years pardoned turkeys will be Jr. & Eric
and I will be stunned if I am the first to make that joke
Raven
I talked to my buddy 101st Abn and fellow VVAW’s. He’s lived in Paradise for 42 years and lost abut everything. I talked to him and it was intense. He said big balls of flaming debris were coming up the canyon and then lp tanks started going. He and his wife were in separate cars and got caught in the traffic jam. The posts on the railings were on fire and it was pitch dark and 10 am. They were pinned down and he said they decided to die together and got in one car. They made it.
JPL
@Raven: That is terrifying. The video of the dad singing to his daughter, showed how dark it was. I’m glad that your friend is okay.
sm*t cl*de
Did someone say “Finland”?
https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780312625443-us.jpg
raven
@JPL: He said he was filming and realized he had Petty playing and turned it off.
OzarkHillbilly
I won’t hold my breath waiting for a perp walk, but it would be nice to see them working the drive thru lane at the local McDonalds.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
rikyrah
Iowa Democrat loses race by 7 votes — but officials refuse to count 29 absentee ballots from left-leaning county
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/11/iowa-democrat-loses-race-7-votes-officials-refuse-count-29-absentee-ballots-left-leaning-county/#.W_KauY7mdVM.twitter
Tony Jay
I’d imagine that, even if you do manage to dislodge the current Maladministration by any means short of human wave attacks on the fortified White House and Trump Tower compounds, one of the hardest things for America going forward is going to be for the sane majority to find a way to live with the Trump voters in their midst, especially the unrepentant ones. I know that I already find it pretty much impossible to take any Brexit voter seriously or to forgive their decision to place their own racism/nationalism/raging arseholism above basic reality and national welfare. As someone very wise on this site once said, 2016 was a series of tests of character, and millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic failed very badly indeed. Coming back together after all this is going to be HARD.
Oh, and if you want to understand how the slow, agonising slide down the razor-edged bannister of Brexit feels over here, just imagine that the transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day lasted over 2 years, and you had to stand by and watch as a committee consisting of Joe Manchin, Paul Ryan, Andrew Cuomo and Mitch McConnell negotiated ways of bringing national policy in line with “The Will of the People” while taking messaging advice from Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, Chuck Norris and Kanye West. And at the end of all that, you – still – had Trump to look forward to.
Let us savor indeed. /s
Nathaniel
My wife pointed out what most likely happened is the President of Finland said something about flora and trump thought he said floor.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: The company will declare bankruptcy, and reopen under another name.
Schlemazel
@Raven:
It is unimaginable. The recovery will be slow and painful to but they made it out thankfully
Chyron HR
@Tony Jay:
You can’t blame them, it was Hillary’s fault. Whenever a bunch of morons and white nationalists vote to destroy their own country, it’s Hillary’s fault. Bernie taught me that.
RAVEN
@Schlemazel: Yea, they are in fairly good shape as far as insurance and such. He knows that not everyone is.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: They are going after the family.
Tony Jay
@Chyron HR:
Right idea, wrong hate figure. Over here it’s Corbyn’s fault. He made them do it, and he’s still making them do it, through the power of his scruffy beard.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Since it’s a privately held company, it’s possible.
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ?!
@OzarkHillbilly: ?, though I feel ya.
@NotMax: did he even pardon turkeys last year? I could see him throwing a tantrum about having to do that.
magurakurin
@OzarkHillbilly: intense article and some other good ones linked in the text. I remember something my former junkie neighbor told me once about smack (which is all oxy is but in a pill) he said no one should ever try it because you don’t know what kind of person you really are until you do…and then it’s too late.
fuck opiates and fuck these worthless fucks who peddle them and the doctors who pushed them.
Chetan Murthy
@magurakurin:
Yeah, a friend once told me “once the needle goes in the arm, it never comes out”.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: They all sat on the board too. My dream of course will never be realized, even now they are moving as much money as they can as fast as they can to their Cayman Islands accts.
debbie
@NotMax:
You’re assuming Trump will take a pass on free food. Those birds are doomed.
debbie
@Tony Jay:
I also remember lots of people believing the lie that billions of pounds would be pumped into NHS the very next day. I would think they’re the people who are most pissed off today.
The Midnight Lurker
…and we all had a big laugh. And no one noticed that neither Trump, not the President of Findland, or even our vaunted media, once mentioned (lowers voice to a whisper)… global warming.
OzarkHillbilly
@magurakurin: @Chetan Murthy: When I collapsed my lung they gave me morphine. It was beautiful. A warm golden glow that flowed over everything. I was still in pain but it was a beautiful pain, the most wonderful pain ever, the kind of pain you want to share with your loved ones. I refused it during the day, only taking it at night so I could sleep. After they finally pulled the chest tube and the x-rays showed my lung holding up, the Doc said I could go home as soon as I had been off the morphine for 24 hrs.
“So I can go home tomorrow morning?”
The doc was more than a little surprised that I had been abstaining during the day. I understand why.
magurakurin
@Chetan Murthy: It seems like smack (and now script opiates) goes in waves. I grew up partying in the 70’s, smoking weed, doing acid, a little bit of coke and speed, drinking beers…but me and my partners in crime were stone cold afraid of smack or any of its variants. Heroin had devastated the landscape just a few years before us. But as time passed…and I got clean and sober (30 years this April)…it seemed like people forgot and it slipped back. The grunge bands were into it and then Oxy arrived…fuck. Bad shit.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
You can’t reconcile with them. The only choice is to rule over them.
magurakurin
@OzarkHillbilly: I was given Demoral when I was fifteen after a ruptured appendix led to hours of clean up surgery…doctor described it as “a men’s room,” to father. I drifted in and out of pain and haze, pushing the little button whenever I came to. After a few days, the nurse said, “No, you can’t have anymore. You’ll get addicted.” At that was that. They gave some at night for a couple more days, and then nothing.
OzarkHillbilly
This video is beautiful: Cowboys SS Jeff Heath is slaughtered by Falcon WR Julio Jones
If Heath had hit Jones that hard he’d have been fined $50,000 and suspended for 3 games for hitting a “Defenseless Receiver”. I guess a defender can’t be defenseless. Still, good on Jones.
magurakurin
@Tony Jay: If you guys crash out of the EU with no deal…oh my god…you are so fucked. I feel so sorry for you. There is a special place in Hell for Putin and his cronies.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Baud!2020!
Gin & Tonic
@magurakurin: I had morphine after a traumatic injury. I can completely understand why people like that feeling.
Haroldo
@Tony Jay:
Vis a vis Corbyn: He and Labour sure ain’t covering themselves in glory here, as best I can tell. I would prefer some leadership.
magurakurin
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
One Baud to rule them all, One Baud to find them,
One Baud to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them,
OzarkHillbilly
@magurakurin: A buddy of mine ruptured his appendix while in the Yucatan. Ended up getting operated on in a little jungle clinic by a doctor who learned his trade in a slaughter house. Saved his life tho so E has no complaints. The Doc spoke very little English and explained the situation to E’s travel mates with 2 words: “Mooch poos, mooch poos.”
magurakurin
@Gin & Tonic: that’s what so dangerous about it.
magurakurin
@OzarkHillbilly:
lol
Bobby Thomson
@Tony Jay: I lost all respect for Michael Caine.
SFAW
@Raven:
Glad they made it through (relatively) OK. I can’t imagine how bad it must have been, for them to make that decision.
raven
Yea, just talking to him left me shaken.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I wonder who won for getting him to believe “nobody has birthright citizenship.”
rikyrah
So, I have been going through my Black Friday wishlist.
I ordered a new Kindle Fire yesterday.
Someone here told us about a wonderful blanket. I am finally going to get one
I have my eye on the Insta-pot deal at Walmart.
I am going to see if Dick’s Sporting Goods will put my favorite walking shoes on sale.
And, the rest of my Black Friday shopping is going to be spent waiting for the emails or tweets from my favorite natural hair care companies. I pretty much stock up for the next year on Black Friday. For most of them, it’s the only time they offer free shipping, let alone any kind of discount.
rikyrah
@Raven:
The stories that I have read, have chilled me to the bone.??
Tony Jay
@debbie:
Which underscores one of the main problems with the 2016 Referendum. Foreign interference aside, the Quitter Campaign were free to say absolutely anything they thought might win them votes and were insulated from ever having to prove anything by the overwhelming certainty in the Media and Parliament that Remain was going to win easily.
Everything on the Quit side was all rainbows and non-fattening chocolate, and while the Remain campaign was arguing for a status-quo that was widely seen as shit, Quit offered a consequence free opportunity to lash out and show everyone you didn’t like they weren’t the boss of you. Angry at Austerity? Vote Leave to punish the (Remain backing) Government. Want a properly funded NHS? Vote Leave to keep that money in Britain. Want more jobs for (white) people? Vote Leave to push the browns out of your towns. Too many women and gays on TV? Vote Leave to punish them for laughing at you. Problems with the size of your genitals? Vote Leave to fix that too. It was the answer to everything.
Which is why the idea of a Second Referendum is anathema to the Quitters. They can’t pull that same trick off twice, not with the reality of what Brexit would mean for jobs and wages and national security being exposed in the cold, hard light of now. Millions would still vote Quit, because they don’t care how bad it gets as long as it’s worse for Those People, and Quit would undoubtedly double down on the “They think you’re stupid, don’t let them win” propaganda, but millions of others would undoubtedly change their vote to Stay once alone in the booth. I don’t even think it would be close anymore.
If any of this sounds familiar, well, the same people were behind both 2016 Screw-Ups and were working from the same basic script.
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
No disrespect to you, but you’re obviously clueless. EVERYONE knows that anything bad that has occurred, or will occur, has been, is, and will be the fault of Hitlary, with an assist from the blackity-black Moooslim Usurper and
money lendercurrency trader George Soros. Corbyn is a mere novice, scruffy beard or no.ETA: Throughout the world, not just the US of A.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Friends of mine moved down there a couple of months ago. He’s a plant biologist and works for a seed firm. Last week they were driving home at night and a drunk guy jumped in front of their car and died. My friend got thrown in jail for a day, they took his passport and the security at his firm advised he get out of their house. They are in a world of hurt.
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: Already bracing myself for some uncomfortable conversations around the holiday table this weekend. Since I’m in FL, my unrepentant Trumpsters will also be crowing about the midterm election results in this state. I do not look forward to it.
OzarkHillbilly
@magurakurin: We laugh about it now but when they put him on the plane home, they did not know if he was going to come off the plane alive or dead. Spent several weeks in a Texas hospital. At least there, there weren’t lizards climbing the walls and the nurses would actually help him shit and clean him up if he had an accident.
SFAW
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Vladimir Vladimirovich
biff murphy
In fairness Finland denied tRumps account https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/18/trump-raking-wildfires-california-finland-1002526
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
My condolences. We’re having 20-plus at Chez SFAW, and as far as I can tell, we’re all left-side. If you want to redirect four wingnut relatives to MA, we’ll be glad to mock them, and dump on Shitgibbon mercilessly — just so we can help your friends/relatives have a “Thanksgiving to Remember.” And, with any luck, they’ll get lost in the wilds of western MA, maybe meet up with some raccoons and fisher cats.
Ben Cisco
Fifty-six cycles around the sun completed. I’m grateful to be here, and grateful for the jackalteriat. Excited about the job hunt (so far, in an “alright, let’s get to it” way as opposed to a “Holy shit, what did I just do?” way). Even accounting for the political climate, I have found home to be better than it was when I left over 30 years ago.
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: Here’s my Black Friday wishlist:
.
.
.
.
.
.
It’ll be tough to get it all but I think I can manage it. ;-)
Baud
@Ben Cisco:
???
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
I am really torn about oxy. It allowed my wife to endure what she went through. Pain, chemo, more pain, etc. It is a very clean and useful painkiller in the right situations. The Sacklers didn’t prescribe any of it. But did they support ‘research’ that it was non-addictive? I dunno.
SFAW
@Ben Cisco:
Happy birthday, youngster.
ETA: Or Belated Happy Birthday? Either way.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Sucks for Florida, but we cleaned up nationally. Stay strong and Be Best.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
That list says you want peace and quiet. Sorry, friend, unlikely.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Baud/The Other Guy 2020 – A Boot To Every Throat and A Cut To Every Nut.
I like it. Run on that you’ll win 49 states (Florida will let you down.)
Tony Jay
@magurakurin:
True. They’re using the artificial threat of This Deal or No Deal to try and jam May’s shit-sandwich through Parliament but I don’t think it’s going to work. And Vlad the Bad may have to cut his little Brexmas Elves loose if the funders of Vote Leave get churned up in Mueller’s investigation.
Raven
@rikyrah: This guy was a grunt in Vietnam and was in some nasty shit. When I talked to him he was very much worried about the impact on his wife but there was a tone, or something, that made me know that he’s in a battle himself. He’ll push through and so will she but it’s intense.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Damn. Just damn. A world of hurt is putting it lightly. We always joked that the last thing one wanted to do was to accidentally run over somebody’s chicken, because you not only had to pay for that chicken but also all the eggs she might’ve ever laid and all the chickens that might’ve hatched from those eggs, and all the eggs those chickens might’ve ever laid…. Sad thing was it wasn’t really a joke.
I hope the company is helping him, they should be. My old man was manager of personnel overseas for Monsanto and he was always getting involved in various legal quandaries on behalf of their employees. I have a feeling most corporations don’t do that anymore.
Raven
@Ben Cisco: Happy birthday baby-san.
Quinerly
@rikyrah: Good morning from Poco and his tribe! Sweet list! I love my larger screen Kindle and Instant Pot I bought a few months back on one of those marked down deal days. Right now, I’m in the market for a 43-49 inch smart TV for the Air BnB walkout basement apartment. In related news, totally addicted? to my Alexa Echo. She’s a hoot when you say, “Alexa, pull my finger.” My inner 12 year old boy giggles every time. Have a great week.
Immanentize
@Ben Cisco:
Happy b-day! Are you no longer taking the Defiant to work?
TriassicSands
@NotMax:
Maybe Adolf and Benito. I don’t see Trump pardoning a female turkey. Although if it gave the GOP enough money, he might give it the Presidential Medal of Fascism, er, I mean Freedom.
Immanentize
@Raven: I’m very sorry for your friend and his wife. I understand about that “tone” thing you heard. Every time I am really struggling, I tell people how worried I am for the Immp. It’s true in only a half-true way.
zhena gogolia
I’m really goddamn sick of people blaming this on the Boomers. I don’t think Trump’s rallies look very much like Boomers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Crow about the mid term election results in this country. Brag about all the investigations the house is going to open into an infinity of corruption. Brag that they won’t have to open 7 investigations into a single thing and find nothing in all 7 of them. Brag about…. Ad nauseum.
Brag until they puke.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yea it’s pretty dicey. I wasn’t
crazy about them moving down there but no one asked me.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Here’s an inspiring story about Barbershop Books, a program aimed at putting books in the hands of African American boys age 4-8 in male spaces such as barber shops. At the end, there’s a link to Barbershop Books’ website if you’re inspired to donate.
Tony Jay
@Haroldo:
I can see what they’re doing, and why. The Media and the Tories have been desperate to paint rejection of the Brexit Vote as ‘Labour’s Betrayal’ since the results first came in, and Corbyn has been wise to avoid that trap. Millions of Labour voters were seduced into voting Quit, and the second he comes out and says stopping Brexit is official policy the puke funnel would be turned up to 11 barraging those voters with the simple message that “Islington Jezza thinks YOU are STUPID RACISTS, Vote Tory/UKIP/Anyone Else” 24/7 until the next Election. If that happens it’s game over, the Tories get Brexit AND re-election. Worst of both worlds, and all the purity parties in existance can’t change the zero sum nature of that trade off.
And remember, despite the closeness of the vote the Government has systematically cut every other Party out of the process of planning for and negotiating Brexit. You can’t provide ‘leadership’ when you have zero influence over what happens. So Labour has kept its powder dry, set out the things it needs from any Brexit deal (things no Brexit deal other than No-Brexit could ever provide) and let the National Conference set the policy by vote, which is get a General Election and renegotiate a Better Brexit (not going to happen) or block the Government’s bad deal and eventually campaign for a Second Referendum once all other options have been exhausted.
tl:dr – Remember all those times people demanded Obama get up on his Bully Pulpit and “Do Something”, and wiser heads said, he is, he’s doing what might work, not what feels good. I think this is like that.
cain
@OzarkHillbilly:
Pain medication never seemed to have worked for me. I suppose I never got high dosage. I was on vicodin at one point for a back pain and it never did anything. In the end, I just threw it in the toilet. I now refuse stuff like that. I rather smoke pot.
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia: They look exactly like Boomers to me — folks between the age of 55 and 70 (ish). That pretty much nails his rally fans. Who do you see?
Tony Jay
@Bobby Thomson:
Yeah, it’s amazing how confident all of these US-based geriatric millionaires are about the brillance of Brexit from the comfort of their LA patio pools, isn’t it?
Wankers.
Matt McIrvin
@Immanentize: What I’d heard is that the company issued prescription guidelines tailored to promote addiction, possibly just as a way of doubling down on false advertising claims. The drug was advertised as having a longer period of effectiveness than it really did, and when patients complained that it was wearing off and giving them withdrawal pains, the company urged doctors to up the initial dose instead of prescribing smaller doses more frequently.
Opiates are important drugs that alleviate immense suffering for people who need them. But the potential for abuse is enormous, and it sounds as if Purdue was at the very least turning a blind eye to how they could be promoting abuse, and at worst acting maliciously.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize:
Yes.
There is a place in medicine for opiates, but they should never be given out like candy. I do wonder about the Docs who bought the “non-addictive” line. A part of me thinks every doctor should get a dose in med school just so they can know how dangerous they are.
OzarkHillbilly
Make America Rake Again. gif
Tony Jay
@SFAW:
Put that cat back in that bag right now, young man!
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
The only solution is to remove an item of clothing every time any of them brings up a forbidden topic. By the time you’re down to your flimsies and Eric Estrada tattoo they – should – have gotten the message.
After that, it’s Drano in a squirt-bottle time.
cain
@biff murphy:
It must be strange to be a trumper to have all these people lie about what their great president has said. The pearls of wisdom that comes out of his mouth are sancrosanct.
TriassicSands
@cain:
There are many different opioids of varying potencies. One individual may respond very differently to different drugs. Because Vicodin didn’t help with pain says nothing conclusive about whether another opioid would be effective.
Just as the effectiveness varies for different drugs, so, too, do the side effects. Adverse reactions are not correlated with the relative potency of individual opioids.
Vicodin (hydrocodone) is not among the more powerful opioids; neither is morphine. That said, take enough and either can kill you, especially if you’re opioid naive.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: I thought part of the problem with oxy manufacturers was that far more doses were made than are prescribed. If that’s the case, they know they’re making money off unsafe use.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tony Jay:
Here is the difference: Like you said, there is a whole lot of buyers’ regret in the UK. In America, there is almost none, and the voters who got us into this mess want much more. Republicans had excellent turnout in the Midterms. They didn’t lose any significant squishy voters that were lied to. Instead, it turned out the entire party joyously embraced open, ugly white supremacy. We did well because people who were never Trump voters are furious and scared in a way they have never been before.
Tony Jay
@Frankensteinbeck:
That is a difference. Or at least, I hope it’s a difference.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: When I had oral surgery for a dental implant (which involved multiple stages of operations with a significant, painful recovery time), they tended to prescribe big ibuprofen pills with an option to use vicodin or Tylenol with codeine, and I generally soldiered through on the ibuprofen and didn’t take the opiates. But once the pain got bad enough that I decided to go for the Tylenol-with-codeine to get through the night. It absolutely did obliterate the pain, but it also made me feel weird and ill in a way that I disliked more than the pain, so I decided that was enough of that. But everyone responds differently to these things.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Serve ’em a plate of spaghetti squash, sculpted to look like you know who’s hair. With a mound of turkey underneath, of course. And one mushroom.
;)
Shalimar
@Betty Cracker: Just reply that all that matters was Dems taking the House. Trump committed treason to get elected, and now there will be investigations that put him in prison for the rest of his life. They will be too angry at you to gloat about DeSantis and Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
@OzarkHillbilly: Excellent. I have been arguing that all Sackler wings of museums should be renamed. Make that name one of the disgraces of history.
OzarkHillbilly
@cain: I have never found a pain med that actually kills the pain, just some that take the edge off. I hoard my vicodin for those times when pain is so bad sleep is impossible. It helps, that’s the best I get.
Honus
@OzarkHillbilly: that was actually a nice tackle by Jones. He hit Heath in the chest with his shoulder and arm and didn’t use his helmet.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Funny, I can’t sleep when I take it. I have a stash from various surgeries and keep it just in case.
OzarkHillbilly
@biff murphy: The Finns are trolling trump beautifully. Make America Rake Again: Finland baffled by Trump’s forest fire raking claim
MattF
Looks like my Thanksgiving will (probably) be OK. The host’s mother is (so I’ve heard) a Trump fan, but she won’t be there. Everyone attending from my piece of the family is a rabid Trump-hater, so that’s all good.
And can we please think twice before blaming boomers for everything? Pretty please?
Matt McIrvin
@Cheryl Rofer: The God Damn the Pusher Man Museum of Art
Eural Joiner
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, I will never forget the day I was hospitalized after collapsing from a kidney stone attack at work. I was lying on the floor, vomiting in pain and screaming and then I got a morphine shot and I still clearly remember thinking “oh, my God, this is the best. day. ever.”
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Never had the, um, pleasure of taking any of that stuff. Having a high tolerance to drugs in general, expect they would provide little if any relief.
When had a root canal back in the 70s, dentist had to administer three shots of novocain and then two shots of procaine before anything began to feel numb.
Chetan Murthy
@Shalimar:
Yeah, I’d go with this. “Sieg Heil, President Putin, Sieg Heil”. Hell, do the damn Hitler salute. Every fucking time they bring up politics. But tell ’em beforehand, that politics is off-limits.
MattF
@Cheryl Rofer: Ugh. The Sackler on the Mall is one of my favorite museums.
raven
@Matt McIrvin: Steppenwolf!
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Shut it down folks, NotMax just won the internets for the day.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
Morning to Poco and the tribe ??
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s an article that details the Sacklers’ evil. Not sure if it’s behind a paywall – I’ve got a subscription.
I had opiates for an operation on bone spurs. (Yes, I had mine removed.) Nothing special. At one point, I felt like I was floating about a foot above the bed, but it wasn’t something so special I’d want to do it again. Looks like different people are affected differently.
raven
@Honus: @Honus: See my note on the family construction biz?
OzarkHillbilly
@Honus: Yeah it was. A thing of beauty.
TriassicSands
@OzarkHillbilly:
That seems like a fairly nonsensical statement. Why? Because everyone responds as an individual and if you gave ten doctors “a dose” of morphine you’d probably get a variety of responses. One or more might find they itch all over. Very unpleasant. One or more might throw up. Again unpleasant, but it tells them nothing about either the effectiveness of that one drug or its potential danger. Unless they are all in pain — and not just any kind of pain — taking “a dose” won’t give them any information about how effective that one opioid — and only that one — is in treating pain for them. On the other hand, one or more might discover that the effect is the most pleasant sensation they’ve ever experienced and decide to take it on a regular basis. Uh oh.
Now, if you’re suggesting that every doctor be caused significant enough pain to both warrant the use of opioids and to test their effectiveness…well, that’s unethical.
In general, opioids pose very little danger for people taking them as prescribed (by a knowledgeable doctor) while avoiding alcohol, benzodiazepines, or other substances that suppress respiration. But, people respond differently, so care must be taken initially not to start at too high a dose and to avoid serious allergic reactions. That, however, should be the way most drugs are prescribed and taken under most circumstances.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
Just say…
Maxine Waters will now head the Financial Services committee..and, then start laughing.
Chetan Murthy
@Shalimar: @Chetan Murthy: Obviously it only works if you’re hosting the dinner. If I were invited someplace where Trumpists might be present, and where there was no possibility of excluding them, and where I really did want to see the non-Trumpists, it would be tougher.
But I suspect that I’d still have to insist that no politics be discussed. And if it were, I think I’d just quietly leave, letting the host know that I couldn’t stay and be a party to it.
Barbara
@Immanentize: There are many very good and thorough stories of how Oxycontin jump started the opioid epidemic, but here are some of the things that are tied specifically to the company (and by extension, its board and management): When Oxycontin was approved it was approved with the idea that it would be resistant to abuse because of time release and other features. The problem was that this “innovation” was mostly wishful thinking and did not actually work as intended:
Source
So almost right from the start, the claims that were made on behalf of Oxycontin’s time release were untrue. In addition, it took drug users about 10 minutes to figure out how to defeat the abuse resistance (by crushing the drug — duh). However, having gotten the abuse resistance claim approved, the company marketed the drug for pain that was not associated with terminal illness, for which abuse is only of limited concern. It marketed the drug to primary care physicians to treat chronic pain, back pain, and all manner of conditions that they had formerly been very reluctant to give people opioids for because of concern over addiction. It started receiving reports of abuse and addiction almost immediately.
Purdue Pharma was almost certainly responsible for underwriting the “fifth vital sign” nonsense, which imposed consequences on hospitals that didn’t adequately treat pain.
Purdue Pharma took a letter submitted to the NEJM that made a comment about addiction being unusual in patients treated for acute pain in hospitals and edited and regurgitated that claim as “addiction being unusual in patients being treated for pain” and ran with it as a comprehensive marketing pitch to physicians. The person who originally wrote that letter was horrified years later when he learned what had happened.
There are other bad actors here, e.g., the FDA, which dropped the ball in numerous ways, as well as organized physicians’ groups, which were very slow to resist the siren song of just giving nuisance patients a pill to make them go away.
MattF
@Barbara: Informative article by Marcia Angell in the latest NYRB is probably a good place to start.
rikyrah
@NotMax:
The thing is..BC has the talent to actually pull it off…LOL
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
Too late! Fortunately, Cole adopted him.
[And by the way, your response was outstanding.]
rikyrah
Whitaker disqualifications run deeper than sketchy work history
Rachel Maddow shares the latest reporting on Donald Trump’s acting-attorney general pick, Matt Whitaker, that make his qualifications seem that much more dubious, including Senator Mark Warner’s concerns about a conflict with the Mueller investigation because of Whitaker’s closeness with Sam Clovis.
OzarkHillbilly
@TriassicSands:
Some day, dawg forbid, you may actually need it. If that day, dawg forbid, ever comes, it will make perfect sense to you.
rikyrah
Stacey Abrams, beaten but not defeated, vows voting rights fight
Rachel Maddow reports on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ non-concession speech in which she acknowledged that she was out of legal options to contest Brian Kemp’s victory, but vowed continued legal action over Georgia’s voting rights abuses under Kemp.
MomSense
I fucking loathe Maggie Haberman. Today she tweeted why Georgia Democrats shouldn’t call the election ‘stolen’. She has never Fucking worried that her fundamental right to vote would be denied. And if Kemp won the election by disenfranchising black people, how the hell does she think he will govern? Will he suddenly treat black people fairly making sure to protect their health and well-being? I don’t fucking think so. Goddammit she is exactly the kind of entitled white woman that makes me disgusted to be part of that cohort.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Schlemazel: You win the internets. You are also the first I have read with that joke. Congratulations!
Baud
@MomSense: Why do I have the feeling she’ll be the next Maureen Dowd?
rikyrah
Trump aims to placate Turkey to cover Saudis on Khashoggi killing
David Laufman, former Department of Justice official, talks with Rachel Maddow about what is unusual about the Trump administration’s consideration of handing a Turkish exile residing in the U.S. to Turkey for certain persecution in a bid to ease pressure on Saudi Arabia over the murder another U.S. resident, Jamal Khashoggi.
MattF
@rikyrah: Pretty soon Trump will invite all the murderers together for a state dinner at the White House. And why not?
satby
@Ben Cisco: Happy Birthday Ben! Hoping for a great new job for you in the next year!
MomSense
@Baud:
Maybe they are. Have we ever seen them in the same place at the same time?
It’s not just MaggieMaureen, obviously there are not enough POC editors and writers at the garbage New York Times who can challenge this kind of bias before it is broadcast to the world.
It also shows that their filter is partisan and it blocks all other considerations. People of conscience should not only call the Georgia election stolen, they should do something about it.
rikyrah
BC,
Straight up, no chaser…
Just tell them..
That Orange Muthaphucka is going to jail. Period. His whole damn family will be joining him. Period.
Happy Thanksgiving.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: Somebody needs to steal her car. Than when she complains about riding the subway, tell her she shouldn’t complain.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
INORITE!
rikyrah
@MomSense:
Same type of bullshyt that Jake Tapper was trying with Abrams yesterday, trying to get her to that ‘Black forgiveness’ racket.
And, rightfully so, Abrams said ‘phuck that shyt’.
Damn straight, phuck that shyt.
Yes, that election was STOLEN.
No. We’re not your Mama’s Democrats. We’re going to tell you that it was stolen, and too bad, if people standing up for themselves upsets you.
Phuck outta here with that bullshyt.
They are really mad with Democrats that stand up for themselves, and tell the truth about the GOP.
That racist muthaphucka spent his entire career disenfranching people who look like me.
Phuck Haberman and the horse she rode in on.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: ?
@Tony Jay:
Trump’s win was powered by a similar circumstance, IMO. I remember thinking after the Brexit vote that, while Leave’s US counterparts were similarly motivated by racism, free-floating rage and lies, the Republicans would fall short in our election because they were burdened with a repellent demagogue as the face of their retrograde campaign. Boy was I wrong.
rikyrah
Why Trump’s absurd claims about a revered Navy admiral matter
11/19/18 08:30 AM—UPDATED 11/19/18 08:41 AM
By Steve Benen
Retired Adm. Bill McRaven, the former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, is perhaps best known to Americans as the Navy SEAL who oversaw the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. McRaven is also recognized as a revered veteran who’s publicly shared some concerns about Donald Trump’s presidency.
Last year, for example, the retired four-star admiral described Trump’s attacks on the press as possibly “the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.” Three months ago, after Trump said he’d revoke the security clearances of some of his critics, McRaven wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post urging the president to revoke his security clearance, too, explaining that he would consider it “an honor” to stand alongside those “who have spoken up against your presidency.”
Trump responded at the time, “I don’t know McRaven.” Evidently, three months later, he thinks he knows all that he needs to know about the revered admiral.
During a “Fox News Sunday” interview that aired yesterday, Chris Wallace discussed Trump’s condemnations of the free press, and pointed to McRaven’s concerns. The president dismissed the celebrated admiral as a “Hillary Clinton fan” whose opinion should be dismissed.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
It’s so enraging. They would never ever put up with it in their own lives. It reveals that they believe black people are inferior and not worthy of the full rights of citizenship.
rikyrah
It’s time to stop visiting diners in rural Iowa
I woke up this morning to these two tweets by the inestimable Nate Silver:
…………………………..
Yes, it’s instructive to suss out what drove Trump voters. But by focusing almost entirely on Bud from Kenosha, the press missed what was really happening in the country. It’s why the press was surprised by the victories of Connor Lamb, Doug Jones, and Ralph Northam. It’s why the press kept downplaying the 40+ seats Democrats flipped in special elections. It’s why, despite all the polling, Democrats were still looked upon as slight underdogs for the midterms. “Surely Trump will be able to mobilize his lumpenproletariat and sweep all before him!”
He didn’t. The Resistance not only held firm, but gave Democrats almost as many votes (60 million) as Trump received in 2016. Trump voters were the story of 2016; the Resistance has held the motive force in American politics ever since.
Perhaps it would behoove the press to now focus on the voters which gave the House to the Democrats. For all his rallies, Trump has shown himself to be a spent force. He is nothing but bluster and fraud. So are his followers. They’re nothing but racists and bullies, and they don’t hold the nation’s fate in their hands. They were overwhelmed two weeks ago, and don’t look as if they’ll regain the initiative.
Instead of visits to truck stops, how about visits to those feared cafes? Visits to parks in LA or New York City? Taking the pulse in formerly red suburbs in the South which this year voted like their cousins in the North? After two years of laser-like focus on rural America, perhaps now it’s time to turn attention to the real “forgotten America”: the one standing against indecency and fascism.
Barbara
@rikyrah: This is why Barack Obama induced widespread panic. People like Tapper and Haberman will forever and always find their most comfortable place among those who feel good that things are getting better for blacks in America — Abrams almost won — but who are still confident that things will never be good enough to eradicate their inherent advantage as white people. Haberman’s status as a mediocre legacy hire should make this transparently obvious.
kindness
3 day work weeks like this week are great except at my company that means I have to get 5 days of work out in 3 days. It kinda sucks but what are you gonna do?
MomSense
@Barbara:
Exactly.
Reboot
@Immanentize: Looks like an all-ages extravaganza at this rally, to me: (Hope this is posted correctly.)
Quick Google image search showed lots of over-55s and lots of under-55s.
Reboot
Looks like an all-ages extravaganza at this rally, to me: (Hope this is posted correctly.)
Quick Google image search showed lots of over-55s and lots of under-55s.
OzarkHillbilly
The human cost of conflict: Lynsey Addario’s Of Love and war – in pictures
She has a wonderful eye, several beautiful pictures of people in such horrendous situations. If I had to pick a favorite I guess it would be Noor Nisa, 18 (right), in labour and stranded with her mother in Badakhshan province, Afghanistan, November 2009
“Her husband’s first wife died during childbirth, so he was determined to get her to the hospital, a four-hour drive from their village. His borrowed car broke down and I ended up taking them to the hospital, where Noor Nisa delivered a baby girl”
Barbara
@rikyrah: They will never focus on the hodge podge coalition of people who showed up to vote for Democrats in the midterms, first, because they devalue women of all ages and colors, but especially older women — I mean, in what kind of political funhouse could a group that makes up more than half of all voters count as a “special interest group,” whereas, a group that probably makes up no better than 20-25% of voters, that is, middle aged and older white guys, count as “regular people”? The whole narrative devalues the kind of people who vote for Democrats, and by extension their interests and needs. And, of course, a “hodgepodge” means that it destroys the kind of clean and uniform narrative that comes from having a monolithic base of support. That’s why we get so many “Dems in disarray” stories, because that’s the best they can do with a diverse base of supporters.
Immanentize
@Barbara: Thank you. That is very helpful. I hold no brief for the rapacious companies, but I do care about proper pain management.
I saw how terminal patients were/are being denied needed pain medication because of our “drug of the moment” focus. It’s a problem. Heroin? Lock up the minorities. Crack — lock em up more! (But powder cocaine is understandable….) Meth? Well it’s poor white people and they are blowing up their neighbors so lock em up!! Opiates? Different response entirely. I like to think we learned from past criminalization failures, but I worry there are other reasons at hand.
rikyrah
@Barbara:
No lie told.
The curve for Mediocre White People is REAL.
Alien Radio
@Tony Jay: you pretty much reiterate my analysis of four days ago
, with more of an emphasis on what the costs of Corbyn coming out against Brexit are. I think we both see how The trap has been set, what the Media’s part in that is, and how this is one of those situations where being patient and keeping your powder dry is the best strategy. Don’t interrupt your enemies when they are making mistakes. Your Obama analogy is exactly in tune with my thinking, and why I have a certain amount of quiet confidence that things will play out exactly as you and I have posited.
Reboot
@Immanentize: Quick image search showed lots of 55 and older types, and 55 and under types. Looks like all ages at this rally, to me :
Fargo rally.
Immanentize
@MomSense: if your BP is already that high — don’t read the editorial observer in today’s NYTs. Pure Dem. trolling by Michelle Cottle. In the prime editorial spot. In the first person.
Chetan Murthy
@rikyrah:
It occurs to one, that (in a nutshell) this is the reason the crackers are freaking out. Now that we’re uppity enough to demand our rights, and numerous enough that we might get ’em, they’re pretty damn terrified.
Fuckem. [(c) efg]
Tenar Arha
@Raven: My best wishes for your friends.
Just One More Canuck
@OzarkHillbilly: Catch the grey men when they dive from the fourteenth floor
Chetan Murthy
@Immanentize: If all we cared about was proper pain management, and not criminalization, oxycontin would not exist. We’d be prescribing morphine and the various other basic opioids, with no patents and no monopolies. There’d be no percentage for doctors to overprescribe, and if addicts could get prescribed opioids and shoot up in clean injection rooms supervised by nurses, with therapy and methadone/suboxone (I think that’s the other drug) available, there’d be no profit for pharmas in pill mills, either.
Criminalization is at fault, too.
Immanentize
Rebbot. Your link is broken and you didn’t close it, capturing your reply button.
rikyrah
Goldman Sachs Star Dismissed 15-Year Veteran on Maternity Leave
Sabrina Willmer
Two years ago, Tania Mirchandani, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. vice president in Los Angeles, told her boss she was pregnant with her third child. He was skeptical she could balance a large family with her demanding job, she recalled. That’s “a lot of mouths to feed,” she quoted him as saying.
Mirchandani, a 15-year Goldman Sachs veteran, figured that her supervisor, of all people, would have understood her dilemma. John Mallory, then a Goldman partner and rising star overseeing wealth management for the West Coast, had four children of his own.
In October 2016, weeks before she was scheduled to return, Mallory called her with some bad news: She was out of a job. “I’m on maternity leave, John,’’ she remembered telling him, as she fought back tears.
Mirchandani detailed her dismissal in a 2017 gender discrimination complaint against Goldman — a document only recently disclosed through a public-records request to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
Just Chuck
@Tony Jay:
Yes, but Obama made the same mistake most of us did: he assumed that Republicans would at worst act in bad faith, and not drop to outright and systematic treason.
Nelle
We saw a photo of my BIL’s house…or the adhes of the house. How hot did it have to be to leave no trace of anything…ni fridge, no furniture, just heaps of ash. Not even the brick fireplace and chimney are standing. It was the parental home that BIL inherited, designed by my MIL, an MIT trained architect.
japa21
@rikyrah: Saw the interview this morning. Wallace had a look that was like “What the Fuck are you saying? Are you crazy?”
Of course we all know the answer to the last question.
Immanentize
@Chetan Murthy:
That is not really true. When a patient is looking at long term pain management, morphine is a very poor first choice. My wife went from Tylenol to Percocet (Tylenol with oxy), to oxy with side tylenol, to morphine, to methadone, to Dilaudid. Each had it’s own uses and purposes at the time. As many have said, individuals react differently to all these meds. A full arsenal is a very good thing. And as Ozark says, I Pray to Dawg you never have to learn this.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: the one of the soldiers carrying the body of their fallen comrade got me, because it was taken at the time and place my foster son served.
TriassicSands
@OzarkHillbilly:
“Some day?”
I’ve taken opioids every day for the past 18 years.
Just Chuck
@OzarkHillbilly: So then oncologists should have to go on chemo, just to see what that’s like? I guess osteopaths should have their bones broken too. Glib bumper-sticker jokes aren’t something that merit attention as solutions.
rikyrah
lips pursed
Mayor Rahm Emanuel cautions Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker about big Democratic majorities in Springfield
Rick Pearson
Mayor Rahm Emanuel used his latest podcast episode, featuring Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker, to caution about “hubris” that can prevent fundamental issues from getting resolved in Springfield because of Democratic supermajorities in the state legislature.
In the “Chicago Stories” podcast, Emanuel also sounded gleeful about Pritzker’s vow to encourage businesses to come to the city and the state in contrast to outgoing Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and complaints he bad-mouthed Illinois too much.
“That will be a fresh start, somebody will sell Illinois. There is a beginning. That’s a concept we haven’t tried in a while,” Emanuel said, not mentioning Rauner by name.
During the podcast, taped last week in City Hall, the mayor asked Pritzker if he was worried Democrats have too big a majority in the House and Senate. The party will have veto-proof margins over Republicans when a new class of lawmakers and governor take office in January.
Pritzker said “there are never too many Democrats” and that lawmakers and he “roughly share the same values,“ particularly involving “kitchen table issues that really matter.”
eclare
@Tony Jay: That is quite a picture you paint….
Chetan Murthy
@Just Chuck:
Uh, I must demur. I think the mistake he made, that most of us did, was to think that Shiltler couldn’t succeed in his treason. And it was a close-run thing, after all. He had to gamble, b/c …. “angry black man accusing Angry White Hope of treason” is not a good look.
Just Chuck
@rikyrah: I think Rahm is most worried about the continuing and deepening irrelevance of Rahm.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chetan Murthy:
I know those crackers, and by birth and training should have been one of them. You’ve nailed it. They’ve been scared for a long time. Brown and especially black people have become more and more visible for decades, on the street, in the workplace, and especially on TV and movies. Back in the 80s an interracial couple on TV was meant to shock. By the time Obama was elected, it had become normal and unremarkable. They feel and see the demographic timer counting down in a way alien and nonsensical to liberals. When Obama got elected, they realized whites are inches from not being in control, and they went apeshit. They’re living in a nightmare dystopia from their point of view. You’ll see big parallels with women.
satby
@rikyrah: I would read that as Emanuel obliquely asking if Pritzker might have to worry about a Republican backlash. Considering downstate, not unwarranted. But either spoken or edited in the article poorly.
Not really a Rahm fan either.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
Oh boy. I may have to prepare myself with some kind of prophylactic mood stabilizers before I read that piece.
Lately I’ve been singing that song I’m on the Zoloft so I can keep from killing y’all.
Jeffro
I’m normally a very serious kinda person but several of my lib FB friends are having a field day over the Imbecile-In-Chief suggesting we can rake our way out of trouble, or perhaps more appropriate, Rake America(n Forests) Great Again. I’m still laughing.
This was always the #1 problem for me: this guy is So. Fucking. Stupid. That’s it, full stop. Just utterly and irredeemably d-u-m-m-m DUMB.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Yup. People are willing to ignore a lot of inconvenient crap if you stroke their biases just right and give them leave to think that venting their frustrations and resentments on The Other is some kind of heroic stand against tyranny, rather than the act of callous cowardice it really is. It shouldn’t work, but we’re nowhere near as sophisticated a bunch of monkeys as we think we are.
Reboot
@Immanentize: Thanks, still learning to post links. I deleted several of the same comment; let me try again:
OzarkHillbilly
@TriassicSands: Then you need to go back and read what I actually said . Here, I’ll quote it for you:
I even bolded the segment you chose to ignore. Just in case you couldn’t figure out that all those things you said in reply were all the things the other parts of me had already said.
Reboot
Okay, re: Fargo rally link, if there’s a tutorial, I’ll go look at it. Apologies for the tech fail.
OzarkHillbilly
@Just Chuck: Read what I said @OzarkHillbilly: and know how ridiculous you sound.
Chetan Murthy
@Immanentize: I tried twice to reply, but seem to have been caught in moderation. Please rest assured that I did NOT mean that patients should not get the opioids [in both amount and -kind-] they need to deal with their pain. Quite the opposite
Uh, could somebody free my comments? Pretty please?
Tony Jay
@Alien Radio:
I was late back to that thread, but I agreed with you then and I agree with you now.
Put it this way, if the British Media wasn’t so embarassingly in close and intimate congress with the Conservative Party they’d be writing paeans to Labour’s strategy for keeping all sides of the argument on board while waiting for the whole Brexit farce to reach its inevitable flatulent crecendo.
But they are, so they won’t. And that’s just the way things are.
A Ghost To Most
@Frankensteinbeck: Yep, Chetan nailed it.
Tenar Arha
@Betty Cracker: Good luck & calm dinner for calm digestion.
It doesn’t have to be a big thing, to make the whole dinner go awry. Every family’s break point is different. But there’s always something that could cause it. This scene from the movie Avalon always comes to mind as the perfect demonstration of this tension on holidays.
I suppose if you need to stop an Uncle holding forth so everyone can eat…you could game out the reaction to: if you have to cheat to win by rigging the electorate, you’ve not won fair & square.
I’ll be in a car with people who generally argue about directions & side seat drive, for much longer than usual part of Wednesday as I deliberately travel out of Massachusetts for Thanksgiving for the first time in my life. I really just realized this will be the first time in my life, except for while I was studying abroad when I didn’t celebrate at all, that I’ll be going to another state for Thanksgiving dinner. Whoah.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
No, you stupid motherfucker, what would be “nice” is NOT having a President whose only purposes in life seem to be self-enrichment and screwing over anyone not wealthy enough to fight back.
What would be extra-special-double-scoop-with-a-cherry-on-top “nice” would be you and your entire crime family spending the rest of your unnatural lives in Rikers or Attica or Angola or someplace similar. Maybe even Alcatraz, but without the tours. Maybe Shemya, in a pup tent.
Mike in DC
@Chetan Murthy: There’s a large, weird subset of white folk–my people–who fear, consciously or unconsciously, that when people of color become the majority that they will treat white people the way that people of color have been treated. To which I say, if you think that may happen, isn’t it better to start being nicer to them, rather than doubling down on the stuff that might make them more payback-oriented?
Ben Cisco
@Baud: @SFAW: Thanks!
SFAW
@Tenar Arha:
If you’re going in that direction, the Sturbridge tolls are always a laff-riot.
Tony Jay
@Just Chuck:
The GOP are now so deep in denial about what they are they’ve done everything but drop to one knee, waggle their jazz hands and shout “The Aristocrats!!”
Ben Cisco
@Raven: Thanks!
@Immanentize: Working from home (and trying to land a new gig also).
germy
A Ghost To Most
@Mike in DC:
From my experience, many of these people are suffering from the gutless choices they made decades ago, and are looking for someone to blame.
Tony Jay
@eclare:
Yeah, sorry about that.
SFAW
@Just Chuck:
Despite the “osteo” in the name/title, I think you mean “orthopedic,” not “osteopath.” And, no, the “manipulation of bones, muscles, and good/bad humors” that osteopaths do is not the same as treating a fracture.
I hope this helps you rise to a more competent level of “nyah-nyah, I PWNED YOU Ozark”-ness
Ben Cisco
@satby: Thank you – I’m doing my best to live by the old adage “Don’t Panic!”
Juice Box
@Chetan Murthy: You’re absolutely right about criminalization. The addiction rate from prescribed opioids is very low. Some simple checks (i.e. California allows physicians to see patient’s drug fill history on-line) help as well. I had a knee replacement and naprosyn didn’t come anywhere close to doing the job (it was fine for post-appendectomy pain). Without Percocet and its entirely unpleasant side effects, I would have had a much slower recovery. Don’t even get me started on the over-hyped CBD oil.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: Yes, I have to say that I was grieved to see that the English failed their test of national character as badly as we did. Simply could not believe it when an elderly English acquaintance of mine actually cited his fear of “Sharia law” taking effect if all those scary Muslim immigrants kept coming over and building their own schools. Among other justifications for voting for it. I am afraid I lost quite a bit of respect for him.
WaterGirl
@Ben Cisco: Your life is living proof that there is a way out of the darkness. I am so happy for you.
Tenar Arha
@SFAW: I’ve heard. My sibling who lives in western MA was like “? yippee! ? no family obligation & don’t have to drive on Thursday.”
(I even tried to get them to shift it so we drove down on Thursday instead of Wednesday, bc if Thursday bad, Wednesday is traditionally a nightmare).
Immanentize
@SFAW:
No more tolls! Just easy riding (although not free and easy) as we have taken down our toll booths and put up robots to crush us if need be.
How many Trump voters did that create?
Barbara
@germy: Voting as a way of pwning libtards is fun only when it comes to imaginary problems, not real ones.
TriassicSands
@OzarkHillbilly:
I try to avoid arguing on the Internet. One of the most often repeated phrases is “you shoulda read more carefully.”
I read what you wrote carefully and I stand by my statement that as written you comment is fairly nonsensical. Perhaps the problem is that you didn’t express yourself more carefully. If you look at comment 157, it seems that Just Chuck had a similar reaction to your comment. But I shouldn’t speak for Just Chuck.
The nonsensical part of your comment has nothing to do with “a part of me.” Rather, it is the idea that “a dose” would tell any doctor anything meaningful about the danger of opioids, unless you made sure they overdosed. That would be worse than nonsensical, it would be unethical (and probably criminal). You specified “a dose” and “dangerous.”
The reason I responded the way I did was because I thought I might know what you were trying to say, but what you wrote seemed to have failed to express that.
It would be helpful if every doctor who prescribes opioids could somehow have the full range of experiences associated with the use of opioids. For example, before taking opioids, it would be nice if they could experience the full range of chronic pain along with the expectation that it might never end. Then, they would actually understand what they were treating. If they could then find effective pain relief from an opioid, they would understand how beneficial they can be. And finally, if they could experience an overdose, they would better understand the dangers involved. But we have no way to accomplish any of the above. Giving doctors “a dose” will not give them the information they need. Hence, nonsensical.
But that’s just my opinion. Based on nothing more than 18 years of responsible use of the drugs and reading endlessly on the subject.
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
It’s things like that that drive me mad when people say the Brexit vote wasn’t fueled by xenophobia and racism. Like, what, exactly, does EU membership have to do with muslims from the Commonwealth coming to Britain? Did they think that voting Leave meant No More Darkies? It looks like they did. They bloody well – say – that they thought and hoped it did. The spike in race-hate crimes after the Referendum would certainly imply they thought they had clearance to act on it too. But calling them bigoted idiots is somehow beyond the pale and ‘justifies’ their vote, because ‘reasons’.
Aaarrrgghhh! I really, really hate having to share my country with blithering fucktards.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
True story.
When my wife, Julie, got into the hospital for what would be her last stay, it was August. And as we know, rotations start in July….
Anyway, a newly minted Intern (Hand to Dawg, his name was “Rube”) was in taking vitals from Julie. Looking at her chart, he exercised his knowledge! “You know, that amount of opiods would kill some who was opiate niave!”. She levelled him, “But I am not opiate niave. I am dying.”
Reason one million why I loved my wife so — she was fearless and honest.
Barbara
@Tony Jay: Darkies? I had dinner with a couple from Britain whilst on a cruise in the Aegean and all they could do was complain about Polish women (blonde, blonde, blonde) giving birth in English hospitals — even though every one of their four children had been working in other EU countries (and were still pissed at their parents for voting to leave). I mean, when their kids get sick or need medical care in Estonia or Austria or Slovakia, to name some of the countries where they had been working, were those countries supposed to ignore them?
Apart from that, reading the coverage in the Guardian of various Brexiteers calls to mind an analogy — Brexit, like conservatism, can never fail, it can only be failed. They cite it like a mantra of a perfect ideal and they just know that somehow, somewhere, there is a person gifted and smart and persuasive enough to get just the right kind of Brexit.
prostratedragon
@Nathaniel: Lor-duh! She’s probably right.
tokyokie
@Chetan Murthy: As a wise Irishman once told me, they’re scared that if they lose power, what they’ve been doing to blacks, women, non-Christians and everybody outside their narrow social stratum, will happen to them. Let ’em sweat.
OzarkHillbilly
@TriassicSands: I’m sorry, I mistook you for someone who would not put words into other people’s mouths. I won’t make that mistake again.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: OK, I want *you* at any future Thanksgiving dinner starring my Trumpist relatives. If only so I can hear my inner Omniscient Narrator intone, “there was a lot of leftover turkey that year…”
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Bravo. I wish I had been able to make her acquaintance.
joel hanes
@Just Chuck:
Rahm has always despised the grassroots as rabble.
Ladyraxterinok
@MomSense: Amen! And so say we all AMEN!
Immanentize
@joel hanes: Rahm and the whole clan, Clinton included (Cuomo Jr. especially) really believed coopting and triangulation were the secret keys of eternal personal power. But that Ponzi scheme, like all others, can only last so long.
Barbara
@OzarkHillbilly: The problem with that “part of you” is that people respond very differently to opioids. I hated opioids when I took them for surgical pain, they made me feel slow and stupid. Many physicians would be just like me and wonder what all the fuss was about. I mean, I know you don’t seriously think that should be the case, but even the idea avoids the reality that there is no clean narrative of addiction, because even with the same conditions and the same access to drugs, some people become dependent or addicted and others aren’t even tempted. Most people take opioids for something in their lives, dental procedures or inpatient surgery being the most common, but that doesn’t make addiction less of a mystery.
Barbara
@joel hanes: Rahm was ready to give up and roll over when Martha Coakley lost her election. Nancy Pelosi sent him to bed with a cookie and a glass of milk and went to work.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: Re your last paragraph: I feel your pain, brother. Buh-lieve me!
tobie
@Tony Jay:
I’m very late to this thread but I have to say that this thought experiment is still hurting me. Courage. I can’t imagine how dreadful the situation must be. The only plus is the beauty of your lurid description of the disaster.
Immanentize
@Miss Bianca:
Ah, an opportunity to tie the whole thread together!!!
I Rx Percoset for your pain!
gwangung
@Immanentize: Traingulation is a useful TACTIC. But to be effective, tactics should be tailored to the situation. And situations change, all the time.
Over-reliance on one tactics is a failure in strategy.
Immanentize
@Tony Jay:
My son is applying to St. Andrews and Dublin (among a host of US schools) for computer science engineering. He prefers St. Andrews, but, Brexit…..
Immanentize
@gwangung:
So very well said. And Trump’s sole reliance on the counterpunch tactic is a complete failure of governance (strategy). Although it might still be a successful vote gaining tactic.
Good insight, thank you.
JMG
So because they are the thinnest-skinned snowflakes in the world, the White House Correspondents’ Association has decided it won’t have any more comedians speak at its horrible annual dinner. Next year’s speaker will be distinguished historian Ron Chernow. I propose we set up a gofundme to make it worth Chernow’s while to get up there and work totally blue. Just go full Sam Kinison and tell disgusting filthy jokes about the Founding Fathers, Grant, Lincoln, etc. It’d be so great.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Am I the only person that sees that comment as venting by Ozark?
Earnestly explaining to Ozark why that’s not a good idea is surely just telling him things he already knows.
Part of me wishes that Trump would spontaneously combust and that the fire would take all his children with him. Please, no replies explaining to me why or how spontaneous combustion is or is not a thing, and how even if it is a thing, it wouldn’t take anyone else with him.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: I saw a quote the other day (maybe on twitter?) to the effect that women are expected to work as if they had not children and raise children as if they didn’t work.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
They gave me Oxy after my ACL surgery and the slow release did seem to work for me, in the sense that it took most of the edge off my pain for a good 10 hours and didn’t make me vomit uncontrollably like Vicodin did. But I still switched to Aleve within about 3 days (as soon as the doctor approved it) because I seem to get withdrawal symptoms very quickly from opiates and I wanted to have as few of those to deal with as possible. Better than Vicodin, but still nothing I would rob my grandmother for.
OzarkHillbilly
@Barbara: See me @OzarkHillbilly:
I have the same problem, which is why no matter how much pain I am in, I only take them if I can’t sleep without them. After this last surgery, I have taken none and I am still in more than a little pain. But, I have been able to have fitful broken sleep, which over the years I have grown accustomed to, because I am always in pain.
Frankensteinbeck
@tokyokie:
That is definitely part of it. The more extreme bigots explicitly talk about it. Watching the Kavanaugh nomination, I realized that a more common motivation is just slightly more subtle and twisted. They value their ability to hurt the Other. The idea that they can’t shoot blacks, beat gays to death, and rape women without consequence is taking away rights that they treasure. The denial infuriates them, in a ‘how dare you’ way, even. The fear is because they think the tables will be turned. The anger is because they’re losing their victims.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: HA!
japa21
@WaterGirl:
No. And your example is a good one. Some people prefer to fixate on a portion of a statement they can pick at and ignore everything else.
Trish Smith
@JMG:
Everything trump touches – dies. It is who he is.
Tony Jay
@Barbara:
Yes, that was the great strategic advantage of the Quit Campaign. They offered a blunt instrument that everyone could use to whale away at whatever target their bigotry aimed them at. Blacks? Gays? Pakistanis? Poles? The Young? The well-educated? Do-Gooders? Anyone and everyone, it didn’t matter. They were offering judgement free bigotry and all you had to do to make your own personal nirvana a reality was vote Leave and show ‘Them’ where the real power lay. So they did, and now look where we are.
And where are we? Exactly where 17.5 million idiots chose to be, but don’t blame them, oh no. Like you say, it’s not ‘their’ fault Brexit is proving to be a clusterfuck. It’s sabotage. Project Fear. The Elites pushing Fake News to postpone the inevitable rise of a Greater Britain from gleaming WHITE Cliffs to the snowy WHITE Highlands. Just put a ‘real’ Brexiteer in charge and the Europeans will crumble, honest.
Wankers.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: No, you aren’t the only person.
Fair Economist
@Juice Box: That’s not what the article says. The article says that short term opiate prescriptions for post surgical pain (only) results in a lowish rate of addiction, but that the risk increases massively with each additional week of prescription. Even the stated risk of addiction (0.6%) is high for a week or two of pain relief if you look at a cost benefit analysis. The addiction risk is also understated since it only tracks legal prescriptions. Anybody sating their addiction with illegally obtained opiates is “not addicted” according to the study.
Tony Jay
@Miss Bianca:
@Miss Bianca: @tobie:
There is still hope. The reality of Brexit is so obviously terrible that I can’t see how May gets even her half-baked disaster of an agreement past Parliament. Every single MP who votes for it has to know that when the economic and social pain really starts to kick in their constituents aren’t going to have much patience with “But I was respecting the Will of the People” and are going to want someone to blame that – isn’t – them. The only thing that prevents a forced General Election AND avoids the unpleasant sight of Parliament vetoing the Referendum vote is to hold a 2nd Referendum asking what kind of withdrawal, if any, the British People now want. The question is how do the politics get to there from here.
Ben Cisco
@WaterGirl: Thank you!
JR
@Juice Box: Overprescription is a huge source of opioid diversion. And that’s a big problem.
Tony Jay
@Immanentize:
And that’s the thing. May is out there babbling that Brexit will allow Britain to attract the brightest and the best from all over the world because those Polish plumbers and Rumanian roofers are no longer allowed to “jump the queue” (can you smell the hateful bigotry in that formulation?). Totally ignoring the reality that when you impoverish the country and unleash social chaos no one in their right mind is going to want to come!
Keith P.
@Juice Box: I just got out of the hospital for two weeks, where all they would give me for anything was Norco every 4 hours and Dilaudid between that. The haze I was in was NO fun….I would have done better on anti-anxiety meds instead.
Barbara
@Juice Box: I don’t know where you get the idea that prescribed opioids aren’t a big problem. Overprescribing is a source of drugs for the black market, of course, but the longer an initial prescription is, the more likely it is that someone will become addicted.
“The risk of a single 5-day opioid prescription, in one chart.”
trollhattan
1. Checks air quality deciding how to get to work: 173. Crap, but half as crappy as Friday. Hmmm.
2. So why are there assholes next door using gas-powered blowers? There oughtta be a law.
Aleta
@Ben Cisco: Happy birthday!
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Good luck with the search.
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize: Ha! Nice try, there, Imm! At least Percocet is one I not allergic to!
chopper
@Barbara:
ex-fucking-actly.
A Ghost To Most
@Ladyraxterinok: Speak for yourself. For me, it’s “Ramen.”.
Ben Cisco
@Aleta: Thanks!
A Ghost To Most
@Immanentize:
That includes MJ. Many people could replace opiates with weed instead.
The Lodger
@satby: It sounded to me like Rahm saying Rahm gets what he wants or nothing happens.
MattF
@Tony Jay: Jumping the queue is dreadful. Nice Americans don’t do it. And it’s what the French and Eyetalians do all the time. And the Greeks too.
Not the Germans, though.
sukabi
@Betty Cracker: install a plank from your back porch out to the water, let your guests know that anyone talking politics / getting obnoxious will have a turkey leg tied around their neck and will be set out on the plank for the gators to clean up.
catclub
@Tony Jay: “and are going to want someone to blame that – isn’t – them.”
This is the only intelligent thing the pro-Brexit pols have done – make sure to NOT be in charge of any Brexit negotiations.
catclub
@Tony Jay: “The reality of Brexit is so obviously terrible that I can’t see how May gets even her half-baked disaster of an agreement past Parliament.”
Hey, I know. The no deal Brexit is so much worse than the crappy deal she has negotiated, MP’s vote for it to not be blamed for the crash-out version. I rate my theory with about a 15% probability of occurring. More likely is they vote it down.
cynthia ackerman
@Schlemazel:
He’s pardoning Saudi Arabia, not Turkey.
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
From where I sit (far away in the USA and admittedly not an expert), I am not seeing anyone call for backing out of BREXIT. The DUP are making insane demands, which may result in them backing out of their coalition with the Conservatives (would they have to pay pay the billion that they got).
Theresa May’s fellow Conservatives pretend that they can get a better deal. Labour pretends that it can get a better deal. Both sides think that they are important to the European Union, no matter whether they stay or go. Meanwhile, the EU is showing some unity in the way in which they are presenting their proposals, and are not trying to tip their hand publicly or do anything to influence the upcoming votes in Parliaments.
But the leave agreement gives dates and time tables. I’m not seeing that the EU right now would see a new referendum undoing BREXIT as wanted or valid. And a lot of the public seems to believe that even a “no deal” BREXIT would work out okay in the long run.
So, how would either a general election or new vote help? I’m really curious to see the magic trick that undoes this craziness.
ETA: Listening to a BBC News story on BREXIT, it was sad to hear Theresa May exclaim proudly that the agreement she and her people hammered out would end the “free movement of people.” This is something to be proud of? Or her resorting to Trumpian bullshit in declaring that the UK would focus on attracting immigrants with skills. The irony of course is that the most useless group of people ever to be allowed entry into the UK were the aristocrats who make up the royal family and their relations.
And conservatives everywhere seem to believe in the free movement of capital, but the suppression, oppression and exclusion of labor.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
Yeah, but he had a wife to focus on the brats while he could concentrate on being a corporate superstar.
I hope the company gets sued into the ground over this BS.
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
People are affected by drugs differently. And not just by different opiates. Some opiates don’t work or have rather crappy side effects for me. And it sounds like that for many.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
I love her too. In a better timeline we would have been besties.
Ruckus
@Nelle:
Sorry about the loss of everything. Is everyone OK?
It has to get above about 1200 deg C. or about 2200 F.
Wood will burn easily at about half that, charcoal burns about that. Aluminum alloys melt at about 660 deg C
Steel melts at around 1400 deg C.
These types of fires can burn extremely hot because they are being fed by winds, adding oxygen to the blaze. An old style forge is just coal or charcoal with air added and that will get steel red hot and soft enough to hand hammer into other shapes.
The normal winds that CA has during this time of year can be rather high. Which feeds these large fires and gives them the heat and speed that causes them to be so hard to fight and so destructive because the heat increases the air movement – and oxygen. It’s a vicious circle, wind, dry stuff to burn, a spark – gives more heat, gives more wind, which gives a huge increase in the spreading speed and the temp it burns at.
Ruckus
@Just Chuck:
Docs have to remain a bit distant to work through a lot of pain of their fellow beings and do their jobs.
But.
Some of them act like they are always immune to that pain or to the destructiveness of some of the meds/procedures, no matter how needed those are. They have little to no empathy for their patients.
It’s a balancing act, too much empathy and it’s often impossible to do the work, too little to no empathy and it’s impossible to do the work well.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Come on, we need the tours so we can taunt them about their rust plated accommodations and the hole in the floor to replace their gold painted crappers. And they should be 24 hr a day tours so they never get any sleep ever again. People can take turns, the night shift could even pay you to take the tour, donations for that taken every day.