Damn straight. That's one developmentally disabled lady who'll never off her husband again.
I'm not a death penalty fan, but come on, she was plenty mentally competent to orchestrate two murders.
For fuck's sake I wish more attention could be found for better injustices. Seems like calls for mercy and justice is reserved for crazy white bitches or equally nonsensical causes like Mumia.
BTW, my ire is not direct at Senor Stanley. It's a blog and you don't get to pick what makes the news. But it sure would be nice if the poor black guys (some of them innocent) also got noticed by celebrities and foreign goverments.
I love how psychological findings morph from nonsense to wisdom and back again depending on how they support a POV or don't.
She's a poor poster child for abolition. There are any number of good reasons to be against the death penalty, preserving her particular life isn't one of them.
Of course she's a poor poster child. That's why she's dead.
4: I'm against the death penalty full stop, so I guess that I do believe that her particular life was worth preserving.
So the shooters got life. That makes sense.
Bostoniangirl is me. Killing this woman in particular doesn't seem like a great argument for the death penalty either, does it?
I think it is a sign of my steadily-increasing age that my views on the death penalty are shifting away from being generally against it, such that now I find myself gravitating more towards an attitude of "Oh, well. Sucks for them."
Didn't one of the shooters testify that the now-dead lady was a slow-witted easy-target and that he goaded her into the whole thing?
I join BG in being against the death penalty, full stop. And for the aspiring vengeance demons, doesn't life in prison seem worse, anyway?
I find it difficult to reconcile my opposition to the death penalty with my desire to throw a large part of the ruling class up against the wall.
10
Didn't one of the shooters testify that the now-dead lady was a slow-witted easy-target and that he goaded her into the whole thing?
No.
According to the WP:
But Shallenberger, who dreamed of becoming a mob hit man, later told a former girlfriend in a letter that he had used Lewis because he wanted money to go to New York and become a drug dealer. He committed suicide in prison.
I, too, am against the death penalty, full stop. I don't see this as being inconsistent with the views expressed by gswift and Biohazard.
12: So "testified" is wrong. But "admitted that he planned the killings and used Teresa to get her to give him the insurance money."
Oudemia, I read that too and remember that he'd written a confession but when it came time to sign it he ripped it up and tried to eat it rather than verify that story. I don't remember anymore where I saw this, though.
15: He wrote a letter to a girlfriend where he lays out the whole thing. That definitely still exists -- I just read it online!
I find I'm upsettingly fencey about the DP. It puts me in questionable company, or near it--I'm still weakly anti-, if I had to vote on it. But, hey, if I fell off the fence into pro-DP territory, it'd make for a satisfying kind of consistency. Pro-abortion (pro choice, obvs, but beyond that, I think abortion is just fine), devoutly pro-assisted-suicide; add in capital punishment and I could just say I'm pro-death. In practice the death penalty is, by lefty conventional wisdom, meted out with horrifying racial bias, and it's maybe something I'm not sure I trust the often highly gefuckt criminal justice system with. In theory, well.....I've forgotten why I got quite so het up about it in my seventh grade position paper.
And then I killed five dollars. I imagine this issue has been well-covered in these pages.
To my mind, the question about the death penalty is how many executions after wrongful convictions are acceptable, and how low a rate of execution after wrongful conviction it is possible to achieve. Since the answers to those questions seem pretty self-evidently to be zero and more than zero, respectively, I'm against it.
On the death penalty I keep coming back to Adolf Eichmann. That motherfucker sure as hell deserved to hang.
In the US justice system as currently constituted I really can't support the death penalty. Routinely executing innocent people seems to me like a bad thing, as does executing someone while letting a worse offender serve a lesser sentence, but that's what we do.
I'm somewhat sympathetic to 17, because I find that for certain types of crime, my liberal heart does not bleed as profusely as it once did. And every once in a while I'll hear or read of a case (there's one in Chester, CT, e.g.) that really challenges my opposition to the death penalty.
That said, I find it grotesque that the state would execute a borderline mentally retarded person, and I oppose the death penalty for all of the reasons mentioned above (racial disparities, wrongful convictions, and so on).
What fundamentally bothers me about the death penalty in the US is that in practice, we have the death penalty for people convicted of horrendous crimes (most guilty, some innocent), who have lousy lawyers. There are enough reasons not to give someone the death penalty, regardless of the facts of the crime they were convicted of, that actually getting a death sentence most likely means your lawyer screwed up.
At that point, they're all unjust. I'd almost think an across-the-board first-degree-murder-conviction-means-death policy was more equitable. (Oh, I'd oppose that too, as overly harsh. To get to a death penalty I could imagine not being strongly opposed to, it would need to be about as rare as what we have now, but more fairly administered, and I don't think that's practical.)
Surely Eichmann deserved much worse, no?
I live in Washington, and a couple of weeks ago, the state killed Cal Coburn Brown, who had raped, tortured, and killed a woman while on parole for similar crimes in Oregon, during some kind of weekend parole-abscondment spree where he also raped and tortured a woman in California.
This caused me to look up some of the other folks my state has killed since the death penalty was reinstated. They include Charles Rodman Campbell, who raped a woman in the 1970s, did six years of a 30-year sentence for that, got out, found the victim, and executed her for testifying against him.
I'm theoretically against the death penalty, but do I think it was wrong for my state to kill these men? No. No I don't. These weren't liquor store holdups gone wrong. There wasn't a questionable eyewitness I.D. They're white guys in a state full of white guys.
26 is the heart of the death penalty debate in the US. I fall for it a bit in my thinking about the Eichmanns and the much more common retail evil in 25. The real question in the case of the US is "Is killing the evil men of 25 worth occasionally killing an innocent person?"
Alternatively, reframe in the rhetoric of shouting heads media as "How many innocent people should the US execute in order to execute some of the guilty?" Or even better "Would you be willing to see Kitty Dukakis executed for a crime she didn't commit in order to ensure that Cal Coburn Brown was hanged?"
we have the death penalty for people convicted of horrendous crimes (most guilty, some innocent), who have lousy lawyers.
I believe no other kind of criminal case gets adjudicated more fairly than a death penalty case. This belief puts me in the weird position of being anti-death penalty, but thinking it's not really a key issue even in the context of important issues in the criminal justice system.
28: That's probably true, but also not incompatible with what I said.
What is the affirmative case for the death penalty? Vengeance and deterrence seem to both justify far more extreme policies than death under anesthesia.
What is the current state of the research on the deterrence value of the death penalty?
My half assed following of the issue says that the consensus went from saying it had no deterrence value to saying that the evidence from different sources is conflicting and gosh predicting crime statistics is hard.
At my old firm, I had a client who was on Virginia's death row. He was executed earlier this year (after I left).
He had truly terrible court-appointed lawyers. He was convicted of two, unrelated murders that happened six months apart. He was tried for both in a single trial -- with no objection from his lawyers. The entire trial lasted two days. That includes jury selection and the sentencing phase. There was literally no physical evidence. His lawyers' argument in mitigation was that there were other people present who he could have killed, but didn't--"he showed mercy."
In Virgina, failure to preserve arguments at the original trial or on direct appeal pretty much dooms your chances on habeas. So we often felt like we were window dressing. Maybe the governor and the 4th circuit sleep better at night knowing he had a big DC law firm representing him. But not when it mattered.
32: That's my impression as well, but I haven't looked in depth.
What is the current state of the research on the deterrence value of the death penalty?
It certainly deters the executed from committing any further crimes. Beyond that, I doubt it has much effect.
Yeah, I'm remembering no positive evidence at all that there's any deterrent value (and of course general research suggesting that rare, draconian penalties have less effect on behavior than certain, mild penalties would suggest that).
35: Technically, that sort of argument is called 'incapacitation'. And the numbers of people executed, compared to the murder rate, are low enough that it's not that much of an effect.
Quick googling finds this from Kieran Healy at CT citing research showing that there might be a deterrent effect in states that kill a lot of people, and being unconvinced by it.
Yeah, I was separating the incapacitation argument from the deterrence argument--since incapacitation is obtained more cheaply by life without parole.
Fifteen, twenty years ago I remember the main data on deterrence coming from studies comparing death penalty states with non-death penalty states. This data showed more effect. Then like five years ago I started hearing studies that looked for different sorts of 'experiments in nature' and did find an effect. But I don't remember what they were, only that they seemed plausible even though they were politically motivated.
--since incapacitation is obtained more cheaply by life without parole.
I think a big part of the support for the death penalty comes from people who do not believe that the state will enforce life without parole.
I am pretty much in the not morally problematic in a perfect justice system, but pretty problematic in practice.
In my fairy world where the convicted are 100% guilty I would be fine walking them straight from the courtroom to the execution chamber. Much cheaper and less hassle that way. This would obviously be horribly unjust in any real world.
The evidence on the deterrent effect of the death penalty is looking more and more like the evidence for global warning: Most of the most recent studies find an effect, and most people who are ideologically opposed to finding the effect find the studies unconvincing.
Since I remain firmly oposed to the death penalty on purely moral grounds, the studies are irrelevant to me.
incapacitation is obtained more cheaply by life without parole
...and solitary confinement, thank you very much.
43: Do these studies control for the amount of publicity given to criminal penalties?
33 is terrible.
I'm against the death penalty, but I don't have much of a problem making a mass murder exception for Eichmann (or Hitler, Goebbels, Pol Pot, or Amin). At some point, there comes the question of where you draw the line -- how many murders is "mass", how much direct control, does it matter if most of their victims were starved (Stalin, Kim Jong Il) instead of executed outright? Is there a difference between waging a "recognized" war and deliberate genocide? Is Nixon a mass murderer because of the number of civilians killed in Vietname? Etc.
Still, I'd have no problem throwing the switch for Eichmann.
I find it hard to imagine anyone being deterred from a crime by the death penalty and not a life sentence, but I suppose there might be some psychological element like finality that makes a difference.
I'd have no problem throwing the switch for Eichmann.
I'd have no problem throwing the switch for Kissinger.
What if the switch was really, really heavy and covered with cow snot?
Cow snot always has bits of whatever the cow has been eating mixed in with it.
where the convicted are 100% guilty I would be fine walking them straight from the courtroom to the execution chamber. Much cheaper and less hassle that way. This would obviously be horribly unjust in any real world.
There's no actual reason why you have to wait around for years or decades between conviction and execution. In Britain, when murderers were hanged, it generally happened a couple of weeks after the trial. You got convicted, your appeal was turned down, and off you went. Speed was viewed as humane. (See the rather good film "Pierrepoint").
What happened to the Unfogged of yore, where we would just feed people to pigs. It was a simpler time, none of these newfangled switches.
54: To sort of tie things together here, I've always been taught, "To err is human; to eat grass and then sneeze it out, bovine."
On the death penalty I keep coming back to Adolf Eichmann. That motherfucker sure as hell deserved to hang.
Yep, and all the people he helped to kill deserved to live. What are you going to do about that?
no actual reason why you have to wait around for years
This is a pretty good reason.
57: Unless you are willing to teach cows to eat with a fork, that seems like a cruel taunt.
Yep, and all the people he helped to kill deserved to live.
Probably not all: what if one of them had grown up to be the next Hitler?
46: A statistically improbable number of mass murderers have the middle name "Wayne." This effect is probably declining for those born after 1980 or so. Apparently if your parents name you for a draftdodging fake soldier and fake cowboy, you may grow up with issues.
The larger middle name effect, sadly, is simply a result of the mass media convention of including the middle name in any story about a criminal to reduce the risk of libel suits.
58: A classic, but classic for a reason.
62.2: I had no idea there was an explanation for that.
In Britain, when murderers were hanged, it generally happened a couple of weeks after the trial. You got convicted, your appeal was turned down, and off you went. Speed was viewed as humane.
One of the most admirable features of the English criminal law is said to be its dispatch. You are tried as soon as possible after your arrest, the trial takes three or four days at most, and after conviction (unless, of course, you appeal), you are executed within three weeks.
[The convicted prisoner] refused to appeal. . . .
Harriet, in consequence, was left to form the opinion that three weeks was quite the worst period of waiting in the world. A prisoner should be executed the morning after his conviction, as after a court-martial, so that one could get all the misery over in a lump and have done with it. Or the business should be left to drag on for months and years, as in America, till one was so weary of it as to have exhausted all emotion.
Dorthy Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon (1937)
I saw a Dateline (or similar) about a woman who was charged with capital murder (plead to a lesser charge) for killing her newborn. I think her IQ was in the 40s. A lawyer working on an appeal for one of her co-defendants (her husband and sister, both also mentally retarded, were charged along with her) discovered not only that she had not given birth, but that she could not possibly have ever been pregnant -- she'd had her tubes tied years earlier (and subsequent testing showed the ligation still fully in effect). The prison doctor who "confirmed" the pregnancy had done so only with a doppler (no point in spending money on pregnancy tests, and no blood test was ever performed) and the state fought the case tooth and nail. The husband and sister are now out of jail (I think only because they agreed to plead to something just to end it). The woman is *still in jail* because she now insists she totally killed that (could not possibly have existed) kid for sure.
In John Wayne-related news, I learned just last night that the next Coen Brothers flick is a remake of True Grit, starring among other people Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon. Which sounded...odd.
This thread is bringing me down. Who's going to New York Comic-Con to play Nerd Stigmata (x points for fedora, Venom T-shirt, Betty Page hair, homemade stormtrooper, black duster, Juggalo paraphernalia, etc.)?
This is bad news for Tommy Lee Jones, Jamie Lee Curtis and Tim Brooke-Taylor.
And do we really need to hear John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt's entire name every single time?
71: And it's often nickname + middle name + surname. Like Charlie Claude Starkweather or the aforementioned Ricky Ray Rector.
I'm for it if it takes out Billy Ray Cyrus.
Hey, that's my pseud too!
I've never seen him live, but I've heard Stevie Ray Vaughan can really kill it.
You people are misunderstanding the Wayne effect. The name "John Wayne" itself has a mystical effect. People with the middle name "Wayne" are more likely to be killers because they have half the name. But if you get the whole name, then you are bound for infamy. See John Wayne Gacy, John Wayne Bobbitt, and John Wayne.
32: I know an ex-cop, politically centrist, who's studying the death penalty, and he said flatly there's no basis for believing deterrence exists.
Ok, I've set leechblock and stayfocusd to the nuclear option on all my browsers. I will not be on unfogged, facebook, or twitter again during business hours. Unless I am. Ok, bye y'all.
I am against the death penalty.
This particular case demonstrates the randomness of it. She was barely competent. Unfortunately, courts view it as an on/off switch.
In many other jurisdictions in Virginia, she would have had a chance of getting less than life.
A quick comparison of who gets life and who gets death demonstrates that really bad factors determine who dies.
I am going to try to mostly stay out of this discussion as my firm does a fair number of death penalty cases.
33:
In my humble opinion, the death penalty bar in Virginia is now mostly outstanding. We should expect nothing less than all outstanding however with something so important as the death penalty.
Criminal defense for the indigent is severely handicapped by funding. The lawyers are mostly excellent and hard-working, but they need experts and investigators. Once again, I highly recommend www.theagitator.com as someone who is a fabulous advocate for keeping an eye on the police.
See John Wayne Gacy, John Wayne Bobbitt, and John Wayne.
The actor Marion Mitchell Morrison should not be confused with the roles he played, almost all of whom killed someone during the film or as part of the backstory. In more than one film the characters portrayed would have been good candidates for the death penalty.
87: I can't believe you drove him away like that.
From the original post:
The Commonwealth of Virginia shuffled someone off tonight.
I originally read this to indicate that the state had sent someone to Buffalo. But I guess that would be cruel and unusual.
90: It's the Buffalo buffalo that really get to you.
and it's maybe something I'm not sure I trust the often highly gefuckt criminal justice system with.
You're convinced it's often highly gefuckt, yet you're still not sure that you should distrust it to decide who gets killed?
Ok, I've set leechblock and stayfocusd to the nuclear option on all my browsers.
Leechist.
I'm theoretically against the death penalty, but do I think it was wrong for my state to kill these men? No. No I don't. These weren't liquor store holdups gone wrong. There wasn't a questionable eyewitness I.D. They're white guys in a state full of white guys.
a) Racist.
b) I don't actually think this is precisely what you're doing, but so often the frame for death penalty discussions seems to be "either we kill them or we just turn them loose on society again."
"either we kill them or we just turn them loose on society again."
I sometimes wonder how our approach towards criminals should change as we become better at diagnosing and treating various antisocial personality disorders. If only we ha someone on Unfogged who teaches biomedical ethics.
90.last: After Noodles (Robert DeNiro) comes back from his "exile" in Buffalo in Once Upon a Time in America:
Fat Moe: What have you been doing all these years?
Noodles: Been going to bed early...
I sometimes wonder how our approach towards criminals should change as we become better at diagnosing and treating various antisocial personality disorders.
I was unaware we'd gotten any better a treating them.
I'm pretty sure I've offered my review of Buffalo before, but my twenty-four hours there taught me that
-Buffaloans (?) are very friendly and hospitable;
-They are also generally surprised you're in Buffalo and not sure why you'd do such a thing as go there, even if you are scheduled to play a rock show;
-There's a bar there that, on Mondays, gives you free chicken if you order a drink; like, a lot of chicken; no, like, seriously, unlimited chicken;
-That same bar also shows pr0n from the '70s on the TVs but, again, only on Mondays;
-Many people want to be sure you know not to cross into Canada "if you've got any priors".
Many people want to be sure you know not to cross into Canada "if you've got any priors".
Is that because you can't get in or can't get back out?
If your priors might result in capital punishment here in the States, it might be a good idea to cross into Canada.
I like Buffalo in part because of the family members who live there, but it also boasts both a lively arts scene and the depressing urban decay I love because I don't have to live there.
In other contrarian opinions, I don't know how people get addicted to stuff like hydrocodone. I feel wretched and fuzzy, though it's helping with the pain. Today I can't just fall asleep the way I could previous days, which is boring.
One interesting thing, that I've heard from people who do a lot of death penalty work (but don't have a study to cite or anything), is that gruesome crimes of the sort that often lead to the DP also have disproportionately high volumes of mistakes made by the cops, investigators, and prosecution. In instances of really serious crimes, everyone gets emotional, there is intense psychological pressure for a conviction, and people do what they ordinarily do in psychologically intense situations -- they fuck up. Thus, it's often not really the case that the worst crimes get the best investigation.
Personally, I'm against the death penalty because I think even horrible people should be given the chance to consciously atone for their crimes before death (i.e., I would absolutely extend the prohibition on the death penalty to Eichmann). Other than that, I don't really see much of a reason to be against it as a general matter, although that obviously doesn't extend to supporting the DP in any individual case.
not to cross into Canada "if you've got any priors"
PLEEEEAASE DON'T THROW ME IN THAT PRIOR PATCH!
I don't know how people get addicted to stuff like hydrocodone
Famous last words?
But seriously, hope you feel better soon.
What I like about Buffalo is the P22 type foundry.
103: You're one of the last people I'd expect to have a clergy fetish.
105: Sure, if you're into that type thing.
I don't know how people get addicted to stuff like hydrocodone
I've got a Rx for Vicodin that I haven't filled. Apparently, root canals hurt and the fact that mine hasn't started to hurt yet doesn't mean it won't.
Well, yeah, obviously people get addicted by finding it more pleasant than I do. And it's much, much more pleasant than the horrible morphine was in my last surgerey. I'm just not great with drugs. Also apparently not great with stopping bleeding, but I think another few days of rest should have me back to full strength.
It's veery frustrating how blurry everything is, which makes my typing bad and my thought process not s o great either.
109: Did we mention that Sunny Wigs aced her audition and is now a regular cast member?
96: There is some evidence that juveniles diagnosed with conduct disorder (psychopaths in the making) can be helped, but I was mostly thinking of hypothetical future developments.
108: Root canals themselves don't generally hurt. All of the nerves are dead and cleaned out in the procedure. Usually the problems come from the reason why you're having a root canal - like an abscess calling attention to the fact that one of your teeth has died. Those fucking hurt. (As anyone who remembers my whining from February can attest to.)
111: General Amnesty will be a Major Feature of the synchronicity.
Sweet, those library books will be mine forever.
113: My tooth hadn't died, so maybe I'll be good.
115: But of course you won't need them anymore.
I have leftover Vicodin from having wisdom teeth removed, and it's leftover (I never touched it) for a similar reason - the thing that hurt and made me get them yanked was so much worse than the yanking that there wasn't really much pain to deal with anymore. Opiates for the week *before* I got it, though, might have been smart.
||
Right now your tax dollars are also at work stealing the personal papers and computers of half-a-dozen longtime peace & labor union activists.
Stupid Fibbies and their illegal fishing expeditions.
||>
The question for me, about the death penalty, is not "Did Adolf Eichmann deserve to die for his crimes?" But rather "Do I trust the government to adequately determine the answer to that question and implement its decision fairly?" And the answer to that is pretty much always going to be "No."
I mean, look at Saddam Hussein. Pretty bad guy, totally not sorry he's dead, but his execution was the result of a kangaroo court that was designed to elide a lot of the political questions that his prosecution brought up, and to shield other guilty parties from justice.
110: I saw that! Glad I could make the introduction!
Eggplant, In my experience (reading profiles of kids in foster care and eligible for adoption) Conduct Disorder is not being applied in consistent enough ways to make helpful generalizations about how kids with the diagnosis fare.
As I've said before, I'm a pacifict and my opposition to the death penalty is closely related to that. In a few weeks, though, I'll be in the courtroom while our former foster son Rowan testifies against one of his abusers (his former adoptive father) in what the investigating detective said was the worst abuse case she'd ever dealt with. I know how I've responded emotionally to the people who've hurt me, but I'm curious to know what my response will be to someone who's hurt someone I do think of as my child.
113: My tooth hadn't died, so maybe I'll be good.
Did you go to an Ethodontist?
Conduct Disorder
I love those old Puritan names.
I don't know how people get addicted to stuff like hydrocodone
I understand all of those words individually, but when you put them together in that order, it's like you're talking some crazy moon-man language. Enough Vicodin is like a bus pass to Happyfloatingland.
Also, my one root canal wasn't even a tiny bit painful, aside from the pain of holding my mouth wide open for the length of time it took to finish it.
123: Vicodin makes me woozy and ill, too, but CA would pretty much take it for fun. (Valium is a HappyFloatingLand service provider for me. I bought an enormous box of it when I was somewhere it was OTC and it probably went away faster than it ought.)
118 was my exact experience with my wisdom teeth as well. (I, like Moby, skipped the dentist for 10 years. With much worse results.)
And Moby, if you're not yet experiencing pain and didn't have much before, it's my highly unqualified opinion that you probably won't.
I'd say something about the death penalty but everything I would say has been said already. (Against. I can see how in a perfect world it might be just but we simply don't live in that world, etc.)
So everybody feel free to mail me all the neglected Vicodin you've got lying around the house. I run an abandoned pharmaceutical rescue shelter.
121: That's the most obscure pun I've seen in a long while.
The author of 122 deserves recognition and praise, and the subject of 122 has been added to the cast for a trial run.
pain of holding my mouth wide open for the length of time it took to finish
You just need more practice, Apo. I'm sure there's some willing volunteers.
Vicodin makes me woozy and ill, too,
I think a fair number of people are somewhat to severely allergic (or something like that) to opiates. My brother, for example, can't undergo standard anaesthesia without ending up horribly gut-wrenchingly ill for several days.
131: I was waiting for someone to make that joke. Well done, Paren!
Vic Odin sounds like the name of a 50s TV wrestler. Saturday Night Special: Vic Odin vs. Gorgeous George.
108: I've had several root canals done recently, none hurt at all after the injected 'caine wore off. I've filled all the Vikes Rx just to have them around in case one of these threads gets too depressing.
I can see how in a perfect world it might be just but we simply don't live in that world, etc
People keep on saying this.
Why would we need or want the death penalty in a perfect world?
Afer my wife and I had our exciting kidney donation/transplant surgeries we were home together in bed for a few weeks with a whole lot of vicodin (just like a honeymoon! Except for the gaping wounds in our bellies!). We tried getting high together, an experience we had somehow missed back in the 80s. I found the vicodin high rather unexciting and gave her my supply, which she enjoyed over several more weeks. I figured it was the least I could do, considering that after all she had just given me a kidney.
86: FWIW, the people I know in capital mitigation --that's social workers, not attorneys--are really smart and hard-working. (It pays way more than most other things you can do as a social worker.)
Why would we need or want the death penalty in a perfect world
There's bound to be some heretics, and voting them off the island isn't as much fun.
The question for me, about the death penalty, is ... "Do I trust the government to adequately determine the answer to that question and implement its decision fairly?" And the answer to that is pretty much always going to be "No."
That says it for me. Got there because of the recent DNA reversals, OJ, Watergate, ad nauseam.
Why would we need or want the death penalty in a perfect world?
The perfect world has just the right amount of marmolated stink bugs, and when they reproduce beyond that number, we send in the Stomping Moby.
137: Seems like a kidney would be worth a whole lot more than a few weeks' worth of Vicodin. Your wife isn't much of a bargain hunter, is she?
133: Someone had to do it.
136: When I say that (don't know about others), I don't mean a truly perfect world, just one where you could actually be assured of knowing whether someone was truly guilty, etc. But even then I'm pretty hesitant to say the death penalty is the right answer.
141: The news said stink bugs had no natural enemies. The obvious solution is a naturalized enemy, but I think maybe we should figure birds or spiders will fill that role. I can't do it alone.
The obvious solution is a naturalized enemy
Or a supernatural enemy.
Wow, everyone's talking about stink bugs. Someone just brought up stink bugs IRL. I'm told there's some kind of bird that likes to eat them. Maybe Moby should give lock some of those birds in his house. I can't imagine a downside.
I'm told there's some kind of bird that likes to eat them.
Maybe the stinkbird.
146: Yeah, it really is becoming a thing. Penn State stink bug site traffic over the last week. Full article including PA map and state breakdown of visitors--I think we're stink bug central. We have all of our drapes off the windows and books and other items moved away form the south wall of the house. They do make a satisfying little "thunk" when you vacuum them up.
142: Not hardly. But I also gave her dibs on which side of the bed, so she could see the tv much better during the recovery period.
OK, and a trip to Petit St Vincent, and a few baubles. But overall she definitely got the worse deal.
Unimaginative, you've written this up in a really charming way. In a perfect world where Modern Love wasn't wretched, you'd be a shoo-in!
150: "I thought I was just getting a kidney, but what I really got was love."
(That's just to start things off. I'm sure the fogged polloged can come up with better.)
|| Aw. Chicago is renaming the Lakeview post office after Steve Goodman. |>
CA would die if I gave him a kidney. That wouldn't be very nice of me. But if anyone here is B-, nous consulter.
They do make a satisfying little "thunk" when you vacuum them up.
So who will be the first to revive the "Sure Fire Stink Bug Killer"? scam
Does he have renal disease, or are you just collecting?
156: Let's just go to Candy Mountain instead.
Having an octogenarian in jail for a crime committed 40-60 years earlier is stupid. I'm not just anti-DP, but also anti-LWP.
Few people know that you can grow a whole kidney from a simple kidney bean. This is why all the Obamacare opponents are concerned about "bean counters". Facts.
157: I should have included a link.
CA would die if I gave him a kidney.
Then you could mail me his Vicodin!
151: I met a guy who has a much better Modern Love story. He received a kidney trnasplant from his wife when he was in his twenties. A few decades later they divorced and he remarried. Then when her kidney started to fail, as typically occurs after about twenty years, he received his second kidney transplant from his second wife.
162: Let's hear it for serial monogamy!
162: The title of the ML could be "Organ? Free, man."
By the way, can the comedy writing team here come up with a good one liner for me to use when someone asks if anyone needs a bathroom break? "I'll check with my wife, it's her kidney" is all I've got.
162, 163: Then 20 years later his third wife wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with "Welcome to the world of Modern Love" spelled out in urine on the bathroom rug.
157, 160: Damn you, M/tch -- my niece showed my kids that, and now they drift around all day murmuring in weird blissed-out voices "We're on a bridge, Charlie!" "It's beautiful and magical!" I am overcome by waves of annoyance.
162: That's so romantic. Has he got number three lined up yet?
when her kidney started to fail, as typically occurs
I hope you guys made enough donor kids to take care of this.
162: "I could tell our marriage was falling apart, and I couldn't help wondering if my kidney would soon do the same, or if it was only my heart that was breaking."
168: I don't know why you're damning me, LB. I have no control over your niece.
165: Bare the scar and say, "Break this, motherfucker!"
171: You reminded me of it. I thought I was safe at work.
165: I don't know about the bathroom break joke, but there's a "urine side me now" joke to be made.
174: You know who else thought he was safe? Charlie, that's who. Just sayin'.
165: Are you in IP law perchance?
|| Am I being unreasonable to be annoyed at this generally favorable review over the facile way in which he treats Taliban cooks, medics, and other schmoes? |>
a good one liner for me to use when someone asks if anyone needs a bathroom break?
Less in a funny-haha and more in a funny-odd direction, you could say, "I'll pass," and then hand the interlocutor a kidney stone*.
*requires ready supply of kidney stones.
169: Apparently it's bad form to inquire about blood type when the adoption agency finally gets back to you. Who knew?
I thought I was safe at work.
Woo hoo, LB is NSFW! Do you work at the no pants law firm or something?
no pants law firm
Many firms are dedicated to helping their clients skirt the law.
183: And many are dedicated to suing the pants off you.
I find I'm upsettingly fencey about the DP. It puts me in questionable company, or near it--I'm still weakly anti-, if I had to vote on it. But, hey, if I fell off the fence into pro-DP territory, it'd make for a satisfying kind of consistency.
Ogged, on the other hand, seemed pretty clear that DP was crossing a line that made someone undateable.
The idea that the death penalty is necessary and/or justified by the existence of truly depraved monsters (Eichmann, Manson, etc.) seems to be really missing the point. (No one here is saying that as far as I can see, but I assume a lot of the support for it comes from people who do think that way. It's more optimistic than assuming that they all genuinely want a medieval law code.) The idea that justice is served by killing someone needs far more support, the role of government is so often explicitly not meting out justice that black swan events seem like a particularly bad place to expect it, and as for execution in the name of public safety, the excluded middle between "kill them" and "let them go" is so huge that I can't believe the people ignoring it are doing so by accident.
67: Sure, you can always come up with a logic under which the present system is the worst of all possible worlds when it's objectively pretty bad. The floor is always bloodiest in your own crime scene, or something.
94
I sometimes wonder how our approach towards criminals should change as we become better at diagnosing and treating various antisocial personality disorders.
Too lazy to track down the link, but I'm pretty sure Ezra Klein had a post on his blog (at least a year or two ago now) about how everyone knows about our mushrooming prison, but that actually just hides another worrying trend. If you look at an overall graph of the overall legally involuntarily restrained population - that is, imprisoned plus committed to a mental institution - it was almost perfectly steady for a century, but in the 1980s, around when the prison population began growing exponentially, the population of people in mental institutions began plummeting.
But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
I didn't read all the way through, Cyrus, but this article was written at the time:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/4/1/75.pdf
Speaking of death, who's up for a date at an autopsy?
Ogged, on the other hand, seemed pretty clear that DP was crossing a line that made someone undateable.
Ogged had ideosyncratic views about criminal punishment.
||
Ack! Stink bug keeps buzzing my head while I'm at my desk!
|>
Really? I've never seen one move except at a slow walk.
Once, I remember an infestation of june bugs. There were hundreds of them coating the outside of the screen door. We had a new puppy who would eat them until he puked and then go eat some more.
Speaking of death, who's up for a date at an autopsy?
It's almost like contemporary Americans sublimate their fear of death into superstitious fancies about sex or something.
Ogged had ideosyncratic views about criminal punishment.
I was thinking of this.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_4410.html#122222
Update! I've taken the stink bug outside and liberated it in the nearby woods, so that my coworkers know that I'm a person who handles crisis moments with calm and aplomb and not by getting all shouty.
188, 193: There used to be a tradition in Pittsburgh of visiting the morgue on prom night.
Ack! Stink bug keeps buzzing my head while I'm at my desk!
Weird. Like Moby, I'm used to them just kind of calmly hanging around and waiting for me to dispose of them. (Though the person who was complaining about them earlier tells me that if many of them congregate in one place, they get feisty.) I used to have a different, non-marmorated kind of stink bug invade my apartment when I lived in Ith/aca and they were much livelier.
There used to be a tradition in Pittsburgh of visiting the morgue on prom night.
Was that a "scared straight" "Bloody Pavement" don't drink and drive, kids, thing, or is Pittsburgh home to more zombies than I realized?
195: So Poised Flopdick instead of Shouty Flopdick.
Lay ... deez.
198: No idea, just learned about it from a Rick Sebak documentary.
186: Maybe it's just people in my field, but in New York it seems to be understood that deinstitutionalization was put into practice without sufficient foresight and the city filled up with mentally ill homeless people. Where do they end up? In prison.
201. IIRC, there was a civil liberties aspect to deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill. Plus there were new drugs that they could take to stop the voices. Of course, when one stops hearing the voices, why take the pills? Add to that the "cost savings" of shutting down all the snake pits, et voila! Throw in the war on some drugs, for profit prisons and prison guard union campaign contributions, what could go wrong?
||
A "surely there most be someone on Unfogged who's dealt with this" bleg:
Anyone installed a window pet door? Something like this, perhaps?
Any recommendations, advice, dire warnings?
|>
dire warnings
Don't try to use the newly installed dog door yourself.
http://www.snopes.com/embarrass/buff/burpus.asp
We had one in a door and the cats seemed to enjoy it (though they were indoor-only and merely using this for litterbox access) but I don't know about window versions.
We definitely want one of some kind so the cats can go out on the deck, but I thought we were going to have to cut a hole in the wall or buy a new door (the current one being glass). The idea of a window version is extremely appealing.
203: We had one for a while (came with the house). It was nice to not have to let them in and out, but our one hunting cat brought too much dead/semi-dead stuff in. After I tore half the kitchen apart trying to find a dead mouse that was stinking to high heaven (turned out it had crawled up into the refrigerator to die) we closed it up. If not for that we would have kept it.
201: I was in the same field, but that was considered common knowledge 15 years ago.
202: Civil liberties plus cost savings was the combination. It was a bit more complex than that because of the history of who paid for what. State governments had always paid for long term mental hospitalization so when the feds came in with Medicaid, they refused to pay for it. So, discharging somebody from a state hospital takes them from bill of the great state of whatever and puts it on Uncle Sam (or much of it).
but our one hunting cat brought too much dead/semi-dead stuff in
You need one of these.
198: No idea, just learned about it from a Rick Sebak documentary.
For another documentary about prom night, I enjoyed this movie. It's very slight, but charming.
Have a patio dog door, easily installed. Dogs loved it. Not currently used
Two problems, possibly related.
1) Drafts. Good magnets don't really help since, as the pictures show, dogs like to go halfway thru and look around. Expensive in Texas summer.
2) Dogs bang back legs & knees against bottom as they run full speed out to attack the falling leaf. Hacksaw might help, but not full answer.
Recommend cloth covering in (curtains) and out to slow dogs down, and maybe a outside cardboard box tunnel (e.g., carpeted pvc might work) to reduce drafts.
May not be pertinent to cat window flaps. Is access, ramps, gonna be provided? I think a cat might love a carpeted PVC tunnel.
Cat window flaps not recommended for high rise apartments.
A couple friends of mine had a falling-out after one broke into the other's house while she was out of town, by crawling in through the pet door. It was funny(-ish) at first, but then he did it again and again, and the permutations got more disturbing -- I think on one occasion he crawled in through the pet door and walked out through the front door, leaving it unlocked, and then drove home, passed out, and forgot all about it. So you should make sure that your friends are bigger than your cat door.
A stink bug just landed on my chair.
So you should make sure that your friends are bigger than your cat door.
Befriend who you wish and feed them until they don't fit through the cat door.
Cat window flaps not recommended for high rise apartments.
Stupid YouTube has nothing related to this, so if you are going to make a horrible mistake, get a camera.
Dogs bang back legs & knees against bottom as they run full speed out to attack the falling leaf. Hacksaw might help, but not full answer.
Yeah, you need to attach the wheels as well.
A stink bug just landed on my chair.
This should be the new "and then I found five dollars".
I think a cat might love a carpeted PVC tunnel.
I say go full monty. Something like this, scaled-up for a cat.
Cat window flaps not recommended for high rise apartments.
If I lived in a high-rise, I'd want to install one of these, and then the cat could spend all day scratching at the glass floor trying to get at the antlike creatures moving around below.
I remember reading an article about a guy who managed to put his head and one arm through a pet door and was strangled to death. People familiar with submission grappling will recognize this as a triangle choke, where one carotid is occluded by the victim's shoulder and the other by someone else's arm, leg, or door frame. Now google reveals nontrace of this.
On cat doors, our experience was much like JP's: too many dead things being brought into the house. Or alive-and-squirming things brought in to be released for fun and games, and our having to intervene. Also, the draft problem.
If it's just to go to a deck (without access to the ground?), or if the cats aren't hunter types, that's a different matter.
Despite the annoyance of being door servant to the cats once we got rid of the cat door, I kind of preferred having a vague awareness of where they were (in or out) at any given time.
225: That's the one! Your google-fu is stronger than mine.
||
189, 194: Y'know, 2005 was really kind of an optimal year for unfogged posting and commenting, wasn't it? Judging by the number of linked posts to that era I've read.
(/meta)
|>
I put a cat door into our master bedroom. The critters can use the pans in "their" room, go downstairs to chatter at the hummingbirds, chase each other through it, and set ambushes, all while we keep the expensive cold air in the bedroom and the connected computer room. It's worked out nicely.
IMX doors to the outside in Alabama invited interesting visitors, like a seriously pissed-off 'possum in one's kitchen. Not good.
229.2 just answered precisely the question I wanted to ask. Little point in my even bothering to comment (or read full threads) anymore.
I didn't think you had a cat, or cats, Di.
I don't recall our having a problem with critters discovering the cat door, but you trade on a sort of trust when you have indoor/outdoor cats in a critter environment, that they will respect one another's space. Worked out for the most part.
Moby has a cat door in his tooth, now.
People familiar with submission grappling will recognize this as a triangle choke, where one carotid is occluded by the victim's shoulder and the other by someone else's arm, leg, or door frame.
I'm scared of Eggplant.
||
Does anyone watch Bored to Death? I think I like it, but everytime I watch it I happen to be intoxicated, and I find the biochemical and televisual effects hard to disentangle, so perhaps I merely think I like it.
|>
234: Eggplant is familiar with many things but competent in few. This disparity is exceeded by his timidity which, in turn, is exceeded by his harmlessness.
229: I'm not too worried 'bout 'possum. We're going to lock it at night; we keep the cats inside after dark on account of 'possum, not to mention coyote.
Sir Kraab finds it difficult to trust nightshades who speak of themselves in the third person.
Stanley finds it difficult to trust knighted crustaceans who speak of themselves in the third person.
Nightshade relatives. The alkaloids do get to one's speech centers though, eventually.
240: Sir Kraab is nobility: they're allowed.
Not scared anymore? I could be the Dogberry to your Sexton.
I always pictured you as more of a Dogbert.
(Lie: inasmuch as I picture you, it's as a cartoony eggplant. And this makes me feel a bit queasy about disclosing what I just ate.)
It might have been a relative of yours, I suppose. Kids, don't use drugs! This moment brougt to you by Vicodin Madness!
It wasn't Nightshade, was it? Don't fuck with that guy.
No, thankfully. I do still have some judgment.
||
While googling for a really lame joke-- I came across this uterus recall from 2008 (a plush uterus recall).
Small part choking hazard
The ovaries may be pulled off and become a choking hazard.
Keep away from children.||
250: Yes, but what was the lame joke?
Real nice Eggplant--foods of the patriarchy!
Hmm, maybe it's best to go right to sleep after taking the sleep aid medicine.
I did err in ascribing masculinity to belladonna.
I had eggplant and roasted red pepper in a tortilla with hummus. It wasn't at all what I'd been craving but it was tasty.
And Stormcrow, don't leave us hanging on the joke! I could use some uterus humor, I think.
253: I forget. Is that the code to kill the hostage or free him?
Did you mix baba and hummus? I thought that wasn't allowed.
some uterus humor
So, a uterus, a kidney, and a duodenum walk into a bar, and the bartender says, "What is this, a joke?!"
There was no tahini in the eggplant, so I think it's fair game. I just had my partner throw an eggplant on the grill the other night so I could use it to supplement various meals.
257: Eggplant is Dan Quaaaaayle? That makes two Quayles on Unfogged now.
258.2: Well it did not really come together as anything but juvenile, stupid and gross, but for 245.2 if you remove the choking hazard parts and their attaching tubes, what internal organ most looks like an eggplant?
Godammit. The irony? I could go for some extra e this evening, and I just wasted it. Now, where is that knife...
266: I could go for some extra e this evening,
You going to go mug a dealer?
Forget the joke, I think Stormcrow's stumbled across a likely anniversary present for unimaginative's wife.
268: Original 2" x 2.5" ink and colored pencil drawing
And only $100!
269: Yeah, but it's unimaginative. Just sayin'...
A uterus, an eggplant and a dead dog walk into a bar. Bartender says, "It's the plumber!".
270: but it's unimaginative
And you could do better?
Animal Planet is showing a bunch of good ol' boys taking city slicker women out to catch fish with their bare hands. I'm not sure I can do it justice, so I won't describe it further.
I didn't realize Paul Feig directed this episode. I love that guy.
48
I find it hard to imagine anyone being deterred from a crime by the death penalty and not a life sentence, but I suppose there might be some psychological element like finality that makes a difference.
IIRC there have been studies purporting to show drops in crime after widely publicized executions. I don't recall them as being terribly convincing but such an effect seems vaguely plausible. Personally I tend to drive a bit slower if I see someone else has been stopped.
189, 194: Y'know, 2005 was really kind of an optimal year for unfogged posting and commenting, wasn't it?
I actually thought that the thread linked in 194 was a good cure for excess nostalgia over that era of unfogged. Reading a bit of it I remembered it seeming like an awkward thread at the time and reading more of it made me think that there really are ways in which the current unfogged is better.
But, yes, 2005 probably was a good time for unfogged, considering that Ogged quit (for the first time) at the beginning of 2006.
Reading that linked thread also reminded me that, even when he wasn't at the top of his game, the ogged personality really was such a remarkably good fit for the medium of blogging.
Uh, that was in following 235, not to 273. Although I would like to see what Feig could do with Meerkat Manor.
Everybody but me knows about "Hillbilly Handfishin'?"
Shearer: based on previous comments you've made, I'd have bet that you'd be against the death penalty simply because it costs the taxpayers more than would life without parole.
277 to 274
275: The question would be is there a comparable effect if similar publicity is given to long prison sentences.
276.last: It's sad he'll go the rest of his life not using his god-given talent: Bitch baiting.
The stories about the case say a judge decided the sentence. IANAL but I though juries decided this in a penalty phase of the trial. Is this wrong?
278: I assume it's similar to this?
283: Except they use a small piece of cord for putting in the fish mouth. And most of the footage is of women standing neck deep in opaque water going, "What just brushed my leg?"
Warning! Keep children out of uterus! Choking hazard!
279
Shearer: based on previous comments you've made, I'd have bet that you'd be against the death penalty simply because it costs the taxpayers more than would life without parole.
Actually it appears I am the only commenter in favor of the death penalty.
I don't find the cost argument all that convincing. The death penalty is expensive because it is a lightning rod for liberal do-gooders. However if there were no death penalty they would probably be whining about something else, perhaps something important. As it is the death penalty has encouraged liberal politicians to balance their opposition with other more substantively important tough on crime measures. So in this way it is serving a useful purpose.
281
The question would be is there a comparable effect if similar publicity is given to long prison sentences.
Similar publicity is not possible as the death penalty is carried out at a definite time and life in prison is not. The purported drop occured after executions not after sentencing.
What if we just said we were executing people and really we sent them to live on a farm in the county?
But is too far to visit. Just know that your serial killer has a big open field to play in.
Highly publicized mock executions is the answer. The defendants, after being relieved to learn, off camera, that they had merely been given quick acting anesthetics, would be offered opportunities to use whatever skills they had acquired in covert government services. Gacy could have lived out his life performing at CIA birthday parties.
Huh. I did not see that pwning coming. Someone must pay.
In fairness, I seem to be attempting to post on Dufogged.
286: The death penalty is expensive because it is a lightning rod for liberal do-gooders.
Well then, seems like there's a pretty obvious, kill-two-birds-with-one-stone solution here, doesn't there?
Pour encourager les autres and all that, what what?
Does lorazepam have an expiration date? Or are the 'zepams like MREs and twinkles. Everything else was of recent vintage, including, unfortunately, the Shiraz.
Twinkies have a relatively quick expiration date.
288
What if we just said we were executing people and really we sent them to live on a farm in the county?
Alternatively we could say we were sending them to prison without the right of correspondence .
That's what they said in Zombieland. Do you believe everything you see in zom-coms?
298: We already do that, actually. They're called "Communication Management Units" and they exist in at least two federal prisons so far. Of course, you get a little bit of a Catch-22 there, because people in CMUs aren't allowed to tell you that they're in a CMU.
At some point however, the "CMU" name has to be changed, as it is too obvious. Perhaps in the future they will be called "Paperwork Reduction Wings" or something along those lines.
299 to 297. I don't know Zombieland's position on capital punishment. They would have to deal with increased fears of prison insecurity, and the possibility that any executions would further endanger the viability of the remaining human breeding population.
most drugs last a long time, and even if its sort of gonem 80% of the original o so is still a lot
it helps tp keep them cool.
301: Not to mention the inevitable cry for civil rights from the Million Man Lurch.
Drugs don't make you cool. Being yourself in such a way that you aren't top different from everybody else makes you cool.
Being a top doesn't make you cool, Moby. Getting good consent from a bottom makes you cool.
drug DO make you high though. much more reliably than most anything makes you cool. Drugs, they are as workmanlike as the death & taxes, the rising of the sun.
death penalty sees like the bullshit symbolic issue. probably better, in a paternalistic way, they letting someone live out life in jail.
on a better note, i fot an rather absurdly large raise today i drank a lot of ogod whiskey.
ogod whiskey
Whiskey so good, you'll take the Lord's name in vain.
Did you drink the whiskey before or after you fought the absurdly large raise?
I fought a raise this week. It was small enough that I'm ashamed I punched it.
|| The left click dealio on my laptop is working maybe 5-10% of the time, randomly. Right is fine. Is there an easy fix of some kind?|>
Switch to a left-handed configuration, which will swap the right and left buttons? (I'm not sure if that's possible on a laptop, but maybe?)
Do you have any canned air you could hit it with? It may just be dust on the contact underneath the button.
315 sounds promising. 314 sounds less useful than my advice, which I considered pointless but put up anyway.
If nothing else, 314 may have reminded CC of a time-honored office prank.
it is a well-known fact that for the most part the pain eats up the high. if you are in serious physical pain, not a drug addict, and you take morphine, you are likely to get some of the woozy effects and have the pain (mostly) go away. you are unlikely to get high, the truthiness of yoyo's point and the fears of asshole dea people notwithstanding. proper pain management often requires the administration of ever-huger doses of serious shit, as the patients gain a tolerance to the drug. this isn't the same as addiction, though. you want to see what it's like, save a few percodan for later when you're not in any pain, and try it out. imo weakass shit like vicodin makes me have all the bad effects (puking, miserable) without the good effects. when you're actually high on opiates, you still might be puking, but you just don't give a fuck or perceive it as that unpleasant. save the valium for later to wash down with some cold white wine, for when shit is freaking you out.
I totally surrender in the "giving bad advice" contest.
318 is interesting. My friend, who beat a vicodin addiction years ago (and got sober somewhat fewer years ago) just had surgey and they put her on morphine in the hospital and lortab after she went home. I was curious how much of a risk that was -- though it seemed obvious enough you can't just leave someone in pain.
the ideal thing is that your doctor and the anaesthesiologist know that you have been an addict in the past. ideally this would make them give you high doses because of your latent tolerance, but just as often it makes them freak out and send you home with tylenol, like a little bitch. and you are supposed to talk to your sponsor and everything during the process.
She's btw sponsors at the moment, but pretty religious about getting to her AA meetings. (She only just started with AA a few months ago after years of go-it-alone sobriety.) Not my job to worry, I know. But my nature...
322: We'll know whose fault it is Di. (Too soon?)
Heh. No, I was just about to add that my worry is actually sort of selfish, because I know if she falls back into addiction I will wind up abandoning her. Because I am twisted and depraved, or whatever the phrase is.
And twisted should be horrible.
BTW, Ed Miliband is going to be history's greatest monster. Obama won't know what hit him.
But other than that, I got it exactly right.
||
A shipment of computer laptops to Iraq was part of the American military's mission to win hearts and minds, but the good intentions were mugged by Iraq's reality.
Don't you just love how we Americans always cast our country as a babe in the woods? Every war, every presidential scandal, the country "loses its innocence" like clockwork.
|>
278 Burkhard Bilger wrote a book about strange things that happen in the American south and the chapter that gives the book its name is "Noodling for Flatheads" about what sounds like the same thing.
Unrelated: do you have to read the entire fucking archive to get why Ogged is invoked in the way he is (supposing you are post-Ogged) or are there select threads that will do the trick?
Noodling for Flatheads
Crap. That was going to be the title of my forthcoming guide to fornication directed at Herman Munster.
do you have to read the entire fucking archive to get why Ogged is invoked in the way he is (supposing you are post-Ogged) or are there select threads that will do the trick?
FTFY. And yes.
To be honest, I don't see how abolishing the death penalty would help that much in correcting for unfairnesses in the system. Life without parole seems almost equally bad, and after a few decades it's just about as irreversible as an execution. To put it another way, if there's a strong enough case to lock someone up for life, then I'd say there's a strong enough case to execute them.
Sorry, I didn't say my last sentence right. What I meant was, the kind of procedural safeguards you would need to feel confident about a death sentence also seem necessary for sentencing someone to life in prison.
Hmm, in casting about for some good Ogged material* I came across this post on WFMU's Beware of the Blog which quoted two different comments (b, uncredited, and "Unfogged's Timothy Burke") from an Unfogged thread (NPR slagfest) two years earlier.
*This is a nice succinct one--with a long thread confronting ogged including classic ogged/bitchphd action with LB pitching in a lot, Who hurts worse? I think this is time for everyone to join hands and repeat "Patriarchy hurts everybody."
I'm inordinately amused by LB's discussion of lips as composed of concave-up or concave-down segments in the thread linked in 337.2.
To be fair, a great number of you hurt me back.
212: Moby, let me tell you about medicaid rehab option hell.
Whoops should be 211.
Anyway, basically the state cut back a lot of what they're willing to pay for in the community, though they do pay some. People living in a group home pay rent and a program fee out of their social security disability payments.
That doesn't cover the full cost. The state does give agencies some money for general stuff, but it doesn't pay extra for group home services.
There is a rehabilitation option where services designed to improve functioning and enhance skills, with the hope that some people may be discharged completely, are reimbursable under medicaid.
The paperwork is hell.
The news related in 329 made me laugh my head off this afternoon; it took at least 2 minutes before I was able to segue to "fucking idiots."
330: why Ogged is invoked in the way he is
But ... in what way is he invoked (assuming you are post-Ogged)?
OT: " One of the most evocative single verses of the Old Testament for me is Ecclesiastes 11.1, which in the King James version is translated 'Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.' I have no idea how close this is to the Hebrew 'שלח לחמך על פני המים כי ברב הימים תמצאנו׃' and I note with interest that while the original המים seems to just mean 'water', the Greek version has "on the surface of the water" (ἐπὶ πρόσωπον τοῦ ὕδατος) and the Latin "on the running waters" (super transeuntes aquas), and various translators have chosen to go with the Latin or Greek development of the original (rather than, as King James's team did, sticking to the original in this case). But we will never quite capture the meaning of the precious water, and the risky act of casting valuable foodstuffs onto it, to the parched agriculturalists of the 4th century before our era.
(And the unspeakable Good News Bible has 'Invest your money in foreign trade, and one of these days you will make a profit.' I kid you not.)"
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1538108.html
337.last is one grim, arduous thread. Just saying.
341: I never actually cared for anyone*, so I don't know what it looks like in the trenches. I have heard people who I was surprised to see pass a mini-mental exam go on to give more administrative details of their care plan than I could keep track of.
Back when I did research in that area, it was all the community population with SMD (i.e who would have been hospitalized in the past).
*in the sense of provided mental or physical health care.
And the unspeakable Good News Bible has 'Invest your money in foreign trade, and one of these days you will make a profit.' I kid you not.'
What an abomination, and who is responsible for this travesty? But I am deeply suspicious of any translation which attempts to be "relevant," with the ambition of "reaching the next generation." O, the cheesiness...
James in 286: what a small, cramped soul you must have.
Moby,
I know you didn't do direct care.
My 59 year-old chronically psychotic client does have a plan--to learn what some healthier foods are and to work on organizational skills for her room, but it's all kind of a joke.
She's been in the hospital plenty and was probably briefly institutionalized--certainly spent time in an intermediate care bed--and she's not going to step down from the level of care she's in now.
We do need to make sure that when she buys clothes that she likes she doesn't have so many that they clutter her room and make it a safety hazard. But I don't think she's gained the skill to do that herself.
To understand ogged, I recommend reading his famous guest-posting stint at Washington Monthly.
348: Thanks. But now I don't understand Washington Monthly.
OT: They now make Barbie dolls with built in video cameras. The lens is just high enough in the happy valley that Barbie could work in a office without some killjoy complaining to HR.
Since this is where my vicodin thoughts have gone, I'll add that I'd been off it and using only the ibuprofin since Saturday morning so that I'd be in good shape to drive to work Monday. Then tonight I got some of the worst pain yet and decided to take an unprecedented two vicodins (per doctor's written orders) and while the pain is dulled but not gone, I haven't gotten any of the nasty haziness or serious stomach pain. Drugs are weird, basically.
349: That was several years ago, when Drum was at Washington Monthly (now Benen is in his slot). At the time, the column was -- and actually still is -- for reportage rather than goading, which is what Ogged was doing by being circumspect. He was being Ogged, i.e. himself, but it didn't fit with the place.
The Washington Monthly folks are fine. Ogged is stubborn.
352: My point, if I had one, was that I did not know they were ever interesting when it could be avoided.
351: Feel better. I'm lucky and still have my unused Rx.
The new Washington Monthly "blog" really is a disaster. It has all the objectivity of Nancy Pelosi's press releases combined with an incredibly irritating veneer of "Sigh. Yet again my opponents do something I would never in my wildest dreams have imagined that they would ever dare to do. How can anyone not be outraged by this? My opponents are yet again as wrong as possible about literally everything. Have they no shame?"
355: Do you mean Benen's column?
If so, I somewhat know what you mean: it sometimes sounds like a never-ending exercise in (yes), "Sigh. Fucking Republicans. Assholes, or prevaricators, or dumbasses, or, you know."
That said, I read Benen pretty much daily -- he links to a great many things, which I consider a service -- and would be sad indeed were he not to write that column. So I wouldn't call it a disaster by any stretch of the imagination.
On second thought: what you describe doesn't really sound like Benen.
For myself, I don't think I've read anything in Washington Monthly in several years. It could have changed.
For what it's worth: if this place has spent its energy, there is some to be found at Obsidian Wings, where there are some new front-pagers added. Gary Farber indeed!
They added Gary? Good. Huh. I guess I'll have to read it now.
max
['Fun.']
Ogged links! Wow, was it really just 3 years ago that he still posted here? Seems like another lifetime.
359: Yeah, Gary's been writing some pretty damn good posts.
if this place has spent its energy, there is some to be found at Obsidian Wings that explains all the smen around.
Oh, I trusted you, alameida, believe me! I was just happy that I avoided some of the side effects I'd had earlier, and since I'm trying to get rid of pain I really don't care that there's no high as long as there's less pain.
