US Politics, May 2023: May 1 never happened

shingles is brutal she's only 38

I hope someone fixes Tuberville, if a fix is possible. What a villain.

I'd shit more on Feinstein but the revelation of shingles is worth sympathy to me. I've had friends and relations totally, utterly immiserated and humbled by it. It is usually incredibly painful and horrible and enduring. One of them was just-- 'get shingrix IMMED NOW."

(i did)

yeah, I'm thinking I should look into a shingles vaccination, I've heard it's pretty awful

it looks like it affected one side of her face. it must have been incredibly painful

I got the 2-shot shingles vax and it was nothing, the needle jab was the only bad part.

my mum's husband is 70. he had shingles about 5 years ago. his eye still looks like that and he's extremely shaky five years later. it's awful stuff. can't imagine what it's like at her age.

CDC recommends vaccination for everyone over 50 and all adults with weakened immune systems (whether or not you know you had chickenpox).

I had shingles a couple of years ago all over my right hand and arm up to the elbow, and another patch on my right side and my back. Based on the descriptions I've read, it was a mild case, and it still fucking sucked.

So DeSantis's latest legislative fuckery is having the expected effect:

Florida fucked up. pic.twitter.com/tnEoAgVBeS

— The Infamous El Guapo (@InfamusElGuapo) May 9, 2023

I have a good friend that got shingles while she was I believe pregnant, she said it was the worst. This past Christmas my brother in law apparently was recovering from it, but we wouldn't have known had someone else not brought it up. There's a really good Conan O'Brien story about him getting shingles in his '20s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b015KoeUGvc

I remember when David Letterman had shingles and it affected his eye(s). When he came back on the show he said he wouldn't wish that pain on his worst enemy.

Disney's Bob Iger had an earnings call today and had some things to say about DeSantis (not by name, of course):

NEW: Here is the complete transcript of Iger's comments about Florida.

"Does the state (Florida) want us to invest more, employ more people and pay more taxes or not?" pic.twitter.com/3jRw3k8AOz

— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) May 10, 2023

my friend's father (somewhere in his mid-80's) has shingles presently and she said he looks like he's about to die and has looked like this for weeks and weeks now. my dad got it when he was in his mid-40's and he was in a huge amount of pain

I got vaxxed for this shit about a month after I turned 50.

okay I'm making an appointment now

The first shingles vax wiped me out for a day, but I doubled it up w/ tetanus, so I think that may have caused it. The second one was comparatively milder, about the same as the vid vax. (You need to space them out by 6 months.)

2-to-6 months is the official recommendation

Ah yeah, that's right. I did space them out by 6 months, because lazy I guess.

While we are sharing shingles stories when I was 30 I threw out my back and couldn’t move for hours and the lingering pain lasted for a week. The first 12 hours were the worst pain I ever had in my life. Then, immediately upon feeling better, I got shingles. That was the second worst pain ever ever got.

Book of Job 2

I have a hazy memory of having chicken pox as a small child, but there's no one left who can confirm it

(or was it measles? I don't know)

Two Job

Everybody I know who's had shingles has been totally miserable, even younger healthy people, so yeah. I really need to do that.

I remember our mother deliberately letting my younger sister and me go out and play with the neighbor kid who had chicken pox so we would get it and then be immune. That was the thinking in the 60s. There was no understanding then that Herpes Varicella-Zoster was a virus that continued to live in the body in the dorsal root ganglia and could be reactivated.

I got shingles around the time I turned 50. I was lucky because it only affected my upper torso on one side and my upper arm. My sister had it in her mouth and was beside herself with pain, and she still has residual side effects, mostly aphthous ulcers when she is stressed or gets sick

There was an inferior vaccine which was the only one you could get for many years before Shingrix was introduced in 2017. Shingrix was then largely unavailable for several years, I'm not sure why, maybe because of a lawsuit. I managed to get it in 2020, after requesting it for several years. It is now widely available.

I read that Feinstein got a vaccine, but wonder if it was the one from before 2017. From the looks of it, her facial nerve was affected

yeah, I listened to that Conan podcast thing above, and it sounds like it fucked up the nerves in his eyes/face for years to come... he would feel weird tingles behind his eye, even years after it cleared up.
Anyway, sent a note to my doctor, begging for the vaxx

okay, my HMO says I should come in and get the shot, also one for pneumonia and maybe tetanus... that should be a fun couple days

But thanks to Sen. Feinstein for getting me off my ass about this!

I had my first Shringrix with those two other shots! They jabbed the Shingrix in one arm and the other two in the other arm. Both my arms hurt for a few days, and since I like to sleep on my side it was a little uncomfortable, but it was fine

Lol jab-braggin: i lived in the hosp for two months and got wee shots in me belly every mornin 6:30a for blood thinning et al. I got A LOT of other shots too, just not as regular. Me and needles, big or small, we good.

Shingrix vax was not notable to me wrt side effects, I do encourage them generally if ur doc sez so.

my punk name is Andy Vaxxer, might need to rethink that

Shingles vaxx fucked me up more than Covid vaxx but still worth it

Wow.

I'm not 50 yet. Guess I should get this eh

I'm 57, I got the shingles vax a couple of years ago. Felt like I got punched in the arm, no other noticeable side effects.

Shingles is the absolute worst. My grandmother had it in her nethers and it basically sapped her will to live and she chose euthanasia. Horrifying. I'd have gotten the vaccine already if it weren't for not being 50

That’s awful.

The fact that it is called “shingles” should be warning enough. Other than “piles” (which I think is more like slang actually) there may not be a less pleasant sounding ailment. (Not that ailments are under any obligation to sound pleasant.)

Piles are just hemorrhoids, easily treated if you are aware of your body

y'all making me want to check w/ mom to see if dad's gotten his shingrix yet

I got chicken pox relatively late when I was 16 and it was easily the sickest I've ever been, feverish, hallucinating, feeling like my skin was burning from head to toe. I'm led to believe that getting it late makes me more susceptible to shingles, and I'm really not into that idea, get me that vax.

I got it at 24 and it started in my esophagus. Almost ended up with pneumonia.

Adding to all this shingles talk — my mom got it in the mid 2000s. Her description of it meant that when I finally turned 50 two years back I got my first Shingrix vaccine shot almost immediately, and I would have gotten it earlier if I could. Get it ASAP if you are eligible and haven’t.

i got the vaxx along with a covid booster and felt more or less like shit for a day or so. second shot was standalone and my arm hurt pretty badly but no other issues so I think maybe doing it with a booster wasn't the best decision, but whatever, I lived.

That's basically what happened to my wife. The two together really kicked her ass.

So, like the COVID vax for many people then

Another winning issue, no notes:

Republicans nationwide are now pushing to repeal No Fault Divorce laws. It’s. All. About. Having. Control. https://t.co/MMvyKKelgw

— Jack Hopkins (@thejackhopkins) May 5, 2023

i haven't read this yet (it's 112 pages)

https://www.thebulwark.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Corruption-of-Lindsey-Graham.pdf

i should provide some context - it uses graham as an example of how the broader gop establishment capitulated to authoritarianism. i read about it on https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/05/the-hollow-men-2, which has excerpts. the early pages provide a good reminder of what was shocking to establishment republicans in 2015 and what they've acquiesced to.

Retributive torture.

On November 27, Trump said detainees accused of terrorism should be waterboarded even if their suffering elicited no information. “If it doesn't work, they deserve it anyway,” said Trump. In a debate on February 6, 2017, he repeated’ “I would bring back waterboarding, and I'd bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.”

After the debate, Graham disavowed Trump's remarks. “We don't torture people,” he said. “That makes us better.”

Targeting noncombatants.

In December 2015, Trump said he would “take out” terrorists' family members, threaten the “lives” of those family members, or make them “suffer.” He said he would do this intentionally, not qust as collateral
damage (in a strike aimed at the terrorists themselves) or during interrogations to avert an imminent attack, but as “retribution” and a deterrent.

Later, when Trump was advised that the military might refuse such orders because they were illegal, he shot back’ “They're not going to refuse me. . . . If I say, "Do it", they're going to do it.”

Graham was appalled. He protested that Trump would “kill . . . innocent people” and make the United States “barbaric like our enemies.” In March and April 2016, Graham threatened not to support Trump in a general election, in part because Trump might “order our troops to commit war crimes.”

of course, Trump's views in 2015 turned out to be more representative of what conservative voters actually think - physically punishing non-believers for eternity is a pillar of the white evangelicals who are trump's my loyal supporters - and also more in line with what the US military and CIA have been doing for decades. there was a stark reminder of that published just this morning (cw: torture) https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/may/11/abu-zubaydah-drawings-guantanamo-bay-us-torture-policy

Of course it's about control. Otherwise, they wouldn't care so much about what other people do.

I feel really bad for the future Ofsteven.

Every once in awhile, I'm reminded that as awful as literally everything Trump's done in his life is, he has for a very long time wanted to do far, far, far, far, far, far worse

I know the intent is to evoke PATTON but all I see is the opening of FOLLOW THAT BIRD. pic.twitter.com/lQ4ETtDkPs

— Bill Chambers (@flmfrkcentral) May 1, 2023

my god desantis is such a clown

he really is a caricature of himself, but with Paul Lynne's voice