Sick day.

I went to bed last night at 6:30 p.m. and stayed there for 12.5 hours. Open thread today. But before the anniversary disappears in the rear-view mirror, a musical tribute to Ten Cent Beer Night. For those of you who can’t watch video, a sober narrative.

Calling the doc today. I’m beginning to think I need stronger drugs.

Posted at 8:22 am in Same ol' same ol' |
 

42 responses to “Sick day.”

  1. brian stouder said on June 5, 2012 at 8:34 am

    I hate it when the creeping crud overtakes me.

    Drink lots and lots of water, and here’s wishing you well.

    Meanwhile, today’s the last day of school, and our oldest daughter did a Chicago bus-trip yesterday to the Museum of Science and Industry.

    Her favorite thing was apparently some sort of ‘house of tomorrow’ thing, which she described at great length.

    But she thought today should be skipped, a notion which did not fly.

    edit: say, at the end of yesterday’s thread, Jeff tmmo has an interesting link about a food safety issue. You didn’t eat a pig’s ear at Mackinac, didja?

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  2. Dorothy said on June 5, 2012 at 8:40 am

    Oh Nancy I’m sorry you’re poorly. Consider this a cyber hand on your forehead and a quick hug if you’re up to it. Hope you’re better soon. If I lived closer, I’d bring you some soup.

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  3. Bob (not Greene) said on June 5, 2012 at 9:25 am

    The only thing that’s gonna make me sick today is if Scott Walker wins in Wisconsin. Democratic cheeseheads better get the hell out and vote today.

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  4. Bitter Scribe said on June 5, 2012 at 10:08 am

    Feel better, Nancy.

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  5. Deborah said on June 5, 2012 at 10:26 am

    Nancy, hope you’re feeling better soon. I’ve got some kind of creeping crud here too. Started with a sore throat, then plugged up sinuses, now coughing. I haven’t missed work because of deadlines, everyone around me is coughing and snuffling too.

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  6. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 10:29 am

    Bob (NG): The talking heads say that Wisconsin is so completely polarized that everyone has picked a side and the whole thing will come down to turnout. I’ve been sending cash to Walker’s opposition for months now. I think they got my email when I bought pizza for the state house crowd last year. I seriously want to see Walker’s sleazy ass ridden out on a rail, tarred and feathered would be gratifying. Between the “dead baby” ad and “divide and conquer” video, and the criminal investigation, it’s hard to imagine anybody voting for the douchebag:

    http://www.alternet.org/news/155713/will_scott_walker_get_a_pink_slip%2C_orange_jumpsuit_or_a_second_chance?page=entire

    http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/06/walker-wisconsin-americans-for-prosperity-new-model

    What’s truly mistifying is that voters would buy a guy like Walker that is such a creature and familiar of carpetbagging criminal bastards like the Koch Bros.

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  7. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 10:47 am

    So Bill Clinton made GOPers all giddy last week with an offhanded RMoney bidness comment. Seems it was a setup for a hard shot to the nads:

    http://onlineathens.com/national-news/2012-06-04/clinton-romney-would-be-calamitous-us

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  8. Judybusy said on June 5, 2012 at 11:32 am

    I hope you recover quickly, Nancy!

    Prospero, Wisconsin’s on my mind today too. Think Progress had an article about how they’re trying to keep many students from voting; don’t know if that’s valid.

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  9. Gene said on June 5, 2012 at 11:33 am

    Omar’s coming, with a song in his heart. http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/6w5b

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  10. Jeff Borden said on June 5, 2012 at 11:34 am

    Folks,

    The news from Wisconsin is likely to be very, very bad. The Democrats were outspent 20-to-1 and the DNC did virtually nothing to help out. The idea of involving Obama in this effort was really, really, really stupid, but the national party should’ve seen this as a winnable battle that might at least slow the ongoing corporatization of our democracy. This will embolden the fat cats like the Koch suckers to more mischief and mayhem, happily abetted by ideologues like Scott Walker and his ilk at the state level.

    The working man. . .the middle class. . .the average guy. . .however you want to typify those of us who cannot buy a politician, we’re all fucked. The Roberts court and Citizens United raised the price of admission to a level we cannot afford. There will be holdouts, of course, but California, New York, Illinois, etc. will be lonely islands in a nation where are states are ruled for the ultra-wealthy by weasels and toadies like Walker, Kasich, Snyder and Scott.

    But don’t worry. When Mittens is elected –powered by an estimated $1-billion in right-wing money funneled through super PACs– he’ll attack that vexing unemployment problem by getting us into a shooting war with Iran and fix our troubled economy by starting trade war with China.

    America, fuck yeah!

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  11. LAMary said on June 5, 2012 at 12:10 pm

    I’ve got what Deborah’s got but I’m swamped at work so I’m here. An all day meeting yesterday put me way behind. 119 emails in the inbox.

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  12. Scout said on June 5, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    Add my get well soon wishes to the pot, Nancy.

    Everything I’ve been hearing about WI sounds like Walker will hang on, albeit barely. And only because of obscene amounts of Koch sucker money. And if he pulls it off, it will be trumpeted far and wide that his was some great ideological victory. NPR has already bought into it.

    Charlie Pierce was on Stephanie Miller this morning talking about the ongoing John Doe trial, so that even if Walker wins today, he could still get sucked down the drain as this proceeds. Since I want it all, I want him to lose today AND be indicted in a few weeks. The other glimmer of hope for WI that nobody is really talking about is that the state senate majority could tip to the D’s today.

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  13. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    Downton preview:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/downton-abbey-season-3-shirley-maclaine-character_n_1567361.html

    I want a perp walk and an orange jumpsuit for Scott Walker.

    Common sense from Ezzra Klein on the “disastrous” jobs report for May:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-dont-read-too-much-into-the-may-jobs-numbers/2012/06/04/gJQA4J75CV_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_cuzheads

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  14. anonymous said on June 5, 2012 at 12:45 pm

    It’s times like this that I think of my dear, now-sainted mother-in-law, who seemed to pronounce all maladies with the same cause: “sinus”. But the older I get, the righter she seems! At least around here. Hope all get better soon.

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  15. Julie Robinson said on June 5, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    Whoops, that was me, posting accidentally as anonymous.

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  16. Dexter said on June 5, 2012 at 1:31 pm

    In the mid-seventies the Toledo Mud Hens class AAA professional baseball team held a few ten cent beer nights each season. I attended a few of them. The beer, it turned out, was the old maximun 3.2 alcohol content brew, which someone allegedly tested out at 1.8 % alcohol by volume.
    Some folks can only drink two beers and no more, while some of us had a hollow leg, as “they” say. That was me.
    I’d take my little brother with me, who also had a large capacity for beer, and we could get a good beer buzz going after a lot of cups of that weak draught. All I remember is a helluva good time with good-natured drunken laughter and revelry as it was supposed to be.
    Since I have been going to games for forty years, though, I have seen my share of fisticuffs in the grandstands. Both Chicago ballparks have been the site of many a drunken brawl.
    Once on a Friday in Comiskey Park I was in the middle of a fight that a whole section’s patrons joined. We had a phalanx of Andy Frain ushers trying to separate all of us. It was over seat-crashing…a party showed up and the drunks in their seats refused to move, and it was on.
    I saw a guy in Wrigley Field on a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark wearing, obviously, his church shirt, which had been ripped open and was bright red from the streams of blood pouring from his schnozzola. It was ugly.
    Prospero undoubtedly remembers how the horrible young drunks shoved vendors down the steep steps in Tiger Stadium’s upper deck left field bleachers.
    Ten cent beer night is a thing of the past.
    Get Well Nance. A shot of peppermint schnapps will help. DeKuyper was my brand when I did such things.

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  17. JWfromNJ said on June 5, 2012 at 1:32 pm

    While many eyes are on Wisconsin, I’m keeping my eyes on New Jersey’s 9th district Democratic primary. Longtime Rep. Bill Pascrell faces a challenge in the 9th from Steve Rothman, who was dislaced from his district by a loss of a congressional seat, and rather than run in his new home, the 5th district, he moved. I guess this pisses me off because E. Scott Garrett, r- 5th is such a repugnant fundamentalist T-bagger pal and the fact that Rothman decided to carpet bag than take on this guy who waxes poetic about how glorius it would have been to see Noah’s Ark just pissed me off. Scott Garrett is a numbskull, and I used to be the beat reporter in his hometown. After some heavy gerrymandering he got a long and twisted district of rich white towns, and now with rothman displaced picked up some of his more working class Bergen county towns.
    Bill Clinton has been stumping for Pascrell, and Obama has been helpful to rothman but stopped short of endorsing. Rothman was the only NJ Dem in the house to back Obama in 2008.
    Pascrell is a Paterson boy, a real brawler, and over the past week or so he’s returned to his roots. Here’s a great look at old school NJ Politics:

    http://www.examiner.com/article/pascrell-rallying-it-up-waning-days

    Too bad no one is willing to take the fight to Garrett. He got his foothold from the Club for Growth, and he makes Mike Pence look like an agnostic and a liberal.

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  18. adrianne said on June 5, 2012 at 1:38 pm

    I enjoyed the musical version of 10-cent beer night. I recall some nights in Knoxville, Tenn., during a summer internship in 1982 watching the Double A Blue Jays from the cheap seats. They had 50-cent beers to lure in the crowds. It worked!

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  19. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 2:03 pm

    GOPers with their priorities straight. Irredeemable shitheads.

    Today is the anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, who is still alive and asking annually for parole. I’d make him room with Charles Manson. The day America went to hell.

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  20. LAMary said on June 5, 2012 at 2:22 pm

    JW, I was thinking that Pascarell sounds like such an NJ name and there you go, he’s from my old home town of Paterson. My brother is involved in Republican politics in that part of the world. I don’t discuss it with him. He used to be a reasonable person, but if he’s gone Tea Party I’m pretty digusted.

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  21. beb said on June 5, 2012 at 2:38 pm

    When you get sick of forcing fluids (which does help BTW) don’t forget the chicken noodle soup. Made from fresh chicken, real broth and fat, wide noodles. My wife makes it whenever I feel poorly and even if it doesn’t fight the cold, it certainly goes down nice and easy and really satisfies.

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  22. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 2:38 pm

    Burdened with politicians like Lindsey “Lord Fauntleroy” Graham, Jim DeMented and Joe Wilson, SC thanks God every day for its sister state, NC. We don’t look quite as fracking stupid in comparison.

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  23. Connie said on June 5, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    I have faint memories of 10 cent a shot tequila night every Tuesday at the Brewery in East Lansing.

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  24. brian stouder said on June 5, 2012 at 3:15 pm

    A semi-non-sequitur, and not to again validate that block-headed column that Nancy linked the other day, about celebrity death and the internet, but news of Pedro Borbon passing away made me think of the old days.

    I won’t say Pedro was my father, but his loss is like losing my 9th grade Biology teacher*, at least.

    http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2012/06/05/pedro_borbon_pitched_for_cincinnatis_big_red_machine/

    CINCINNATI — Pedro ­Borbon, who pitched 10 years for the Cincinnati Reds and helped the Big Red Machine win back-to-back World Series titles, died of cancer Monday. He was 65.

    *that person, in fact, is now the Assistant Principal at the school my daughters attend, come to think of it..!

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  25. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 4:14 pm

    A ridiculously entertaining rumination by Zadie Smith concerning books, bookstores, public spaces and libraries:

    http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/jun/02/north-west-london-blues/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=June+5+2012&utm_content=June+5+2012+CID_a7c4c8703d0f58f51d8b4160ebb234ae&utm_source=Email+marketing+software&utm_term=The+North+West+London+Blues

    Dime tequila shots is one exceptionally bad idea, doomed inevitably to ghastly ramifications. A bar in Athens GA called the B&L Warehouse, for no apparent reason, used to have nickel draft nights, until local gubmint and Babdiss stepped in to 86 the stupid idea. Brewskis transcended Go-cups for standard serving size, replaced by trays for a $buck, and it was real beer, not 3.2 PX surplus. Many redneck stompings and girl fights ensued, artistically impaired by the absence of longneck empties. An odious and unpopular local restauranteur was in the congregation one night, being forward with other men’s WAGs. He was unceremoniously rousted from the bar by some large good ol’ boys, and suffered a repeat humiliation when he sneaked back in. Of course, as them boys was gentlemen, the lout was allowed to finish his tray of cold adult beverages.

    We blew that popstand not half an hour later, and headed for a friend’s house down a pitch black, little traveled road that ran past the Blue Light Country Club, about which Jim Morrison may have written Roadhouse Blues, had he ever visited Athens. The establishment did indeed have bungalows for the people that liked to go down slow. And blue bulbs in each porch fixture. The place featured weekly sherrif dept. raids and cuttings on weekends. I was driving with no difficulty, having consumed only a quarters worth of brew in a couple of hours, when something in the road ahead made me question that logic. Headlights in the shape of a : in my face. A giant ass Dodge Ram dualie on its side facing me in the wrong lane. We stopped to offer assistance. I climbed up to the exposed door and saw the besotted restaurant guy covered in blood and currency. Seems he had cashed out the bank at his restaurant before getting loaded. A few $thou were strewn all over the king cab. My man was minimally conscious and moaning steadily. Way before cell phones so my ex went to find a phone to call EMS.

    The unfortunate bastard had wounds that demanded direct pressure, so I climbed in to try to help. Meanwhile a crowd had gathered, and everyone was an expert on the situation, insisting that he heeded to be removed from the truck. I figured moving the guy without stabilizing his spine was probably a lethally bad idea, and told all these Samaritans to back off and leave him alone. I was also keen not to let anybody else see the cash. My friend Moseley organized some of the bystanders into a crew to right the truck, and since it was partly in a ditch, they were able to. I stayed in the cab to keep the victim as immobile as possible, and protected him from the volunteers that wanted to move him until the ambulance arrived. After many weeks, guy recuperated and returned to health. Couple of months after the incident, I heard he had told people that his cash had disappeared from the truck that night. I assume he was fleecing his bidness partner, but he was trying to blame it on me, after I likely saved his live. His femoral artery had been transected when he wrecked, and I managed to staunch the wound enough that EMTs could get to him in time.

    I never heard another word from that SOB. But I’ve had a jaundiced opinion of cheap beer promotions ever since.

    As a lifetime Dodgers fan, Brian, I was never a keen on Borbon. I always considered him a prototype of the full goose looney Dominican, like Marichal, particularly after his brawl with Buzz Capra, triggered by Pete Rose’s cowardly attack on Bud Harrelson, when he put on the Mets cap by accident and then bit a chunk out of it. He’s also known to have bitten people during fights. Is it true Borbon put a curse on the Reds when they traded him? At least he never hit a catcher on the head with a bat, as Marichal did. He was a damned good reliever, though.

    http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/cin/hof/hof/directory.jsp?hof_id=111227

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  26. Brandon said on June 5, 2012 at 4:41 pm

    Get well soon.

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  27. brian stouder said on June 5, 2012 at 5:01 pm

    And regarding our friends in Wisconsin, I confess I’ll feel a little guilty for taking pleasure in Walker’s political downfall, if it comes to pass tonight.

    It would be more straight-forward to have a parlimentary system at the state level; certainly a lot less expensive

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  28. MichaelG said on June 5, 2012 at 5:11 pm

    Feel better quickly but get plenty of rest anyway.

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  29. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 5:20 pm

    Something that ought to be drilled into RMoney’s hubristic head and heart (if he’s actually got one; probably as stillborn as his soul):

    And so I recognize myself to be an intensely naïve person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight. And I retain a particular naivety concerning the British state, which must seem comical to many people, particularly younger people. I can only really account for it by reaching back again, briefly, into the past. It’s a short story about debt—because I owe the state, quite a lot. Some people owe everything they have to the bank accounts of their parents. I owe the state. Put simply, the state educated me, fixed my leg when it was broken, and gave me a grant that enabled me to go to university. It fixed my teeth (a bit) and found housing for my veteran father in his dotage. When my youngest brother was run over by a truck it saved his life and in particular his crushed right hand, a procedure that took half a year, and which would, on the open market—so a doctor told me at the time—have cost a million pounds. Those were the big things, but there were also plenty of little ones: my subsidized sports centre and my doctor’s office, my school music lessons paid for with pennies, my university fees. My NHS glasses aged 9. My NHS baby aged 33. And my local library. To steal another writer’s title: England made me. It has never been hard for me to pay my taxes because I understand it to be the repaying of a large, in fact, an almost incalculable, debt.

    –Zadie Smith–

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  30. alex said on June 5, 2012 at 5:56 pm

    I thought I’d heard it all when I got into it with a birther the other day, but today was surprised to learn that someone I know has a bag full of guns and food rations packed and ready for the Zombie Apocalypse which is supposed to coincide with the Transit of Venus. This wasn’t someone who had struck me as particularly insane.

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  31. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 6:05 pm

    The Angel’s Share.

    Damn, Alex. Aren’t all the cool kids calling it the Zombpocalypse yet?

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  32. Suzanne said on June 5, 2012 at 7:38 pm

    Yeah, Alex, I’ve run into a number of those, too. People I thought were perfectly sane who start spouting off this birther garbage. I just had a guy today tell me about the busloads of Democrats from Michigan who were being taken to Wisc. to vote against Walker. Then can do it, dontchaknow, because the Democrats in Wisc. got rid of the voter ID law, so anybody can come in and fake vote.

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  33. Deborah said on June 5, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    Hey speaking of Wisconsin, where’s Sue these days? Out knocking on doors perhaps? Did I miss something?

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  34. Prospero said on June 5, 2012 at 9:56 pm

    Typical RMoney fundraiser. It would take Tom Robbins or Pynchon to make this shit up. What would be the Fauxnews line if Obama dined beneath artistic works by Mau Mau leaders?

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  35. JWfromNJ said on June 5, 2012 at 10:14 pm

    Aww shit. This doesn’t bode well. Was hoping the T-baggers stayed on the couch. We need a major NASCAR race on Nov. 6.

    http://nbcpolitics.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/05/12074595-nbc-news-walker-emerges-victorious-in-wisconsin-recall?lite

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  36. beb said on June 5, 2012 at 10:33 pm

    Ron Silver of 538 is going to have to explain this. Walker/Barrett were polling roughly 50/50 this morning and 10:30 om results at TMP shows Walker with a 15% lead. How could the polling be so far off? If you ask me wholesale voting fraud. Stealing election, a Republican specialty since 2000.

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  37. Joe Kobiela said on June 5, 2012 at 10:58 pm

    Prayers to all the ghosts of the 101 and 82nd airborne that made that jump into Normandy on this night so very long ago. I can’t begin to show my thanks enough.
    Pilot Joe

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  38. Deborah said on June 5, 2012 at 11:16 pm

    Shit. Big money wins. Depressing but not unexpected.

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  39. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 5, 2012 at 11:23 pm

    Nate Silver. Ron Silver was a mensch, though.

    There’s a grave just north of me with the final date of June 6, 1944. He was killed atop Pointe du Hoc; his little brother now lives in Kentucky, and is ailing, and asks me to go to the graveside and say a prayer for both of them.

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  40. Dexter said on June 5, 2012 at 11:54 pm

    Borbon dead at 65, Sheryl Crow is walking around with a benign tumor in her head, Scott Walker somehow wins in Wisconsin, and the Zombie Apocalypse is in full swing as Venus transits ole sol.
    And just when I can’t take it anymore, after both the Tigers and the Redlegs lose, a ray of hope…make that a Ray of hope, as old man Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen and Paul Pierce and Rondo team up to beat The Whore of Akron http://www.amazon.com/The-Whore-Akron-Search-LeBron/dp/0062066374/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338954926&sr=1-1
    and fancy man Dwayne Wade and Boston beats Miami in the basketball semifinal series.

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  41. MarkH said on June 6, 2012 at 12:30 am

    Best post of the night, Joe. Let us never forget the next 24 hours from 68 years ago.

    beb, most polls leading up to today had Walker with a perhaps narrow lead, so it depends on which polls you were looking at. Borden saw enough credible information today to that effect to issue his lament above. It’s real, no malfeasense as much as you’d like to believe it because it’s a republican victory. Besides, Holder’s justice department was supposedly there watching things, so there’ll be a lot of braying if anything smells.

    EDIT – So, big money wins, Deborah. That’s it. The people of Wisconsin are just stupid….or could it possibly be that the majority of Wisconsinites are genuinely unhappy with Walker, but just didn’t feel what happened with collective bargaining rose to the level of actually unseating a duly elected governor…?

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  42. coozledad said on June 6, 2012 at 1:46 am

    Best post of the night my ass. More of that Republican heroism by vague association. My uncle died in that war, shot down over Anzio. Another one went behind enemy lines and garroted German boys and watched them die in his hands.
    You fuckers revere death for its own sake.

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