- One-third of all drivers who die in automobile accidents test positive for some kind of drug, and “the presence of all types of drugs in fatal crashes has increased 5 percent in the past five years,” according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. This is easily explained by the fact that Americans would be totally incapable of coping with their monotonous, mostly disappointing lives without swallowing hundreds of milligrams of Alprazolam & Self-Pity (Extended Release) every single day. Government Drug Lord Gil Kerlikowske says that this data “should serve as a wakeup call,” but who wants to wake up from a delicious Hydrocodone haze? If anything, this should serve as just another reason to drink more Fentanyl for breakfast. (But also: Mr. Kerlikowske once said that Four Loko is against the law, so he is probably a moron.) Anyway, here’s to a nation of FDA Regulated Junkies, constantly killing themselves as they zoom across endless expanses of asphalt and roadkill. Cheers! [USA Today/CNN]
- Obama will probably arrest Julian Assange, for invading the government’s privacy. Meanwhile, Assange might move to Ecuador? [McClatchy]
- “A new report shows the number of so-called ‘dropout factory’ high schools in the United States has declined since 2002.” But don’t worry, many of these factories are still working at full capacity. [Chicago Tribune]
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What about the other 2/3s? I'd say that stupidity and carelessness plays just as big a role as drugs. I'd like to see a war on stupidity. Seriously.
How can you expect our elected leaders to wage war against themselves?
Never stopped the GOP'ers and Xtian Fundies
See war on homosexuality:
Haggard, Ted
Craig, Larry
Mehlman, Ken
etc etc etc
But those men aren't gay, I heard them say so themselves; except for Mehlman, of course, he's out there and lovin' it.
A war on stupidity would depopulate the country, it would be like the FEMA camp thing that the teabaggers are so paranoid about. Sounds like a great idea.
We had a war on stupidity, 1861-1865. Unfortunately for us, teh stoopids won the real war, and now we subsidize them.
I thought that it would be good idea if the driver’s exam included a high school level physics section with an emphasis on collisions and momentum. Give the dummies something to think about as their head passes through the windshield.
Then only nerds would be allowed to drive.
& most nerds prefer public transit or bicycles. The latter, even for the fat ones.
(Maybe, again, it's being from where I am, but you wouldn't believe the number of portly cyclists I see.)
You can see the appeal.
Stupid people see other dummies in those test crashes on TV and can't wait to try it out.
It has long been my belief that you should have the option of taking a driving test as impaired as you think you can be, and still pass it, and if you do, they make a notation on your license, and that becomes your "legal limit." If you can prove that you have better judgment and reaction time with a .15 BAC than the 75 IQ moron over there, or the 75 year old frail and failing driver over there, then that becomes your personal legal limit. Same deal with any substance of your choice.
I LIKE IT – I have to admit, I was still a little high when I took my driver's exam in the 10th grade, and I think it made me a safer driver. (I had been taking pot earlier that morning – as Howard's Mother once said)
Will someone PLEASE explain to me how they get a dead guy to pee in a cup?
You are not watching your quota of forensic/procedural crime shows and medical dramas.
From what I remember of my jolly high school daze (where 5 of my classmates crossed the rainbow bridge from boozed up driving), all you gotta do is wring out the wet undies – cause one usually "just lets it go" upon expiration. You just gotta hope that Gary Sinise can decipher feces from Phenobarbital!
Shit, Kalifornia's already got to get rid of 49,000 inmates stacked 2 and 3 high in 6 x9s – where do you expect to put the other 325 million….?…export to Haiti?…
The other 2/3rds were texting.
First you go, then I go, then you go, then I go.
These same officials are believed to favor Brie over cheddar, early post-war French cinema to Hollywood and subscribe to the New York review of Books which they read cover to cover every other week on Sunday while sipping tea and eating English muffins topped with orange marmelade.
They also keep their pinky raised when holding the teacup.
And refuse to give reach-arounds, calling it an "undignified practice".
What sort of relationship does China have with South Korea? South Korea is a big exporter, as is China, so there's potential tension there. North Korea, though, is a giant sinkhole for China. They buy Chinese weapons, of course, but can't afford to buy all the day to day tchotchkas that the rest of us purchase. Additionally, China is probably props up North Korea financially. Would it be a wash for China to have the whole peninsula under South Korea's rule?
South Korea: buys tchotchkas, but exports stuff, but isn't a giant money pit for China
North Korea: buys weapons, but not much else, sucks up Chinese money like a drunk on a bender.
China may be willing to go with the South. Who knows.
It's not like China gets along with any of its other neighbours. So, having a rival in a United Korea at its border wouldn't be an unheard of event.
(I think Pakistan might be the only country with which China shares a border & has good relations. & even that is more a result of mutual dread over India. But Viet Nam, Laos, Russia, Mongolia (honestly, especially that), et. al. — not buddy-buddy with the PRC.)
China and Russia have settled their border disputes by treaty. I've been to the border post closest to Vladivostok. It's not fortified.
the south will be the one left standing. the north looks ready to either implode or explode. hence the militaristic shenanigans. tottering dictatorships always turn to finding or creating external enemies to distract the sheeple. the argentine junta in 82 is a prime example. they couldn't deal with their economy anymore, so they went to war against britain. didn't turn out like they expected.
Perfect description of the 2001-2009 Bush Administration.
might as well include Bush I 1989-1992…Gulf War #1 was nothin' but a lame attempt to buck up their 'patriotic' numbers since they didn't know how to fix the economic shithole left to them after 8 fuckin' years of Reagan voodoo economics…some things never change, eh? *sigh*
S. Korea has lots of factories in neighboring parts of China. A vacation to China is a cheap over-seas adventure. Go to Changbaishan, and you can gamble, enjoy sex-tourism, look at the lake whence the first Koreans rose, and even look at North Korea.
Some S. Koreans are probably dreaming of acquiring N. Korea's nukes.
I'm assuming in this case the word sophisticated = "tired of funding Li'l Kilm's Inept Li'l Terror Machine."
Chinese people will tell you that eating cheese is why White people smell bad.
Another third of the fatalities are caused by people who've read these articles and are having full-blown panic attacks behind the wheel as a result. The last third? Loose puppies and kittens getting under the driver's foot as he tries desperately to slam the brakes. Happy holidays.
I refer to my stash of Vicodin as 'my driving pills.'
Shrooms rhymes with vroom!
"Shrooms shrooms shrooms!" is the new Mazda jingle.
I think the one time I drove under the influence of shrooms, it was the half mile from the local public lake beach to my mom's house; about a half mile of gentle country lane with no stop signs or other traffic.
Took me about 40 minutes. Walking would have been faster. Hell, crawling would have been faster.
I herd a rummer on teh intertubes that "hip hop" is what the mobility scooter crowd does after hip replacement surgery:
They getz hopped up on Hillbilly…
Let Natural Selection do its thing, it's the short-circuiting of obvious consequences that have brought us to this place. I say let 'em have what they want, only implant birth-control so they won't drag innocents into their miserable death spiral, in a generation or three all this malfunctioning brain chemistry will be a historical footnote…
Now where did I put my bong?
"All types of drugs" is definitely bad for you. One at a time, people. One at a time.
Au contraire, mon frere, the possibilities for sculpting the perfect buzz are infinite, finding the perfect combination is like creating a perfect cocktail; the important thing is that it must be done carefully, only after thorough research into the solo effects of each ingredient you may wish to employ.
I concur, Prommie. In fact, I think I'ma go whip up a batch of Brompton's Cocktail right now.
No doubt my outlook would be rosier were I stoned when not sleeping.
That's how the sixties got started. And they ended, of course, with Manson.
Buzzkill.
(But I love your LolJazzCats. A lot.)
Brubeck will cut you if you eat all the greens and neckbones before he gets a plate.
My first gf's father always advised me, "never mix, never worry". Good advice that I usually follow (except for last Saturday, ugh).
Government Drug Lord Gil Kerlikowske says that this data “should serve as a wake up call,”
It is precisely because the nice government man has asked me to WAKE UP that I always dissolve two or three tabs of adderall in my breakfast espresso.
This is easily explained by the fact that Americans would be totally incapable of coping with their monotonous, mostly disappointing lives without swallowing hundreds of milligrams of Alprazolam & Self-Pity (Extended Release) every single day.
True dat. But I prefer dropping some of that Green Dragon the fundies keep going on about. I like to laugh.
Personally, I like the Purple Drank – it gives me street cred.
I recall reading in the National Lampoon, some 40 odd years ago, that BJs were the leading cause of traffic fatalities – a belief I've not questioned in all these years. Is it possible that PJ O'rourke lied?
"Coming and going don't mix"?
Yep, just like oil and water, toothpaste and orange juice, sodium thiopental and potassium chloride.
That's why you must have you ball joints and other suspension compenents examined regularly, lest they fail and lead to an accident.
Oh wait.. by BJ you meant something other than "ball joint?" My bad.
I forgot O'rourke used to be kinda funny.
He does suck.
On the one hand you have the drug industry encouraging people to get stoned, then the automobile industry wanting people to drive all the time, the insurance industry profiting or not from high accident rates, employers feeding workers laudanum or the equivalent thereof to get them to go down in the mines, etc. It's so confusing, the natural response is to get high and go for a ride.
Druggie Csar Gil is correct that the drugz & drink are players in the glory of "Murica's highway carnage. So too, however and also, is the fact that we have decided that everyone who is not completely blind or a quadriplegic gets to drive. This includes folk with the spacial relationship set of an amoeba, the reflexes of a road-killed possum, and the attention span of a gnat, and sometimes three time losers who have all three working at once. And remember Wonketeers, that three time loser that is coming right at you in the oncoming lane is chatting on the cell phone and flossing while driving.
Or pissing Ensure into her/his Depends while desperately trying to remember if the president is named Truman or Eisenhower.
OK, we're really tired of hearing about your mom.
Skoolz ar'nt so bad huh? Chock nother 1 op fer duuuhhhbya.
Things won't change until bars come to you.
Cant the internets help make that a reality? After all, from what I've been given to understand the internet is just a series of tubes. Imagine if it were a series of tubes flowing with alcohol?! Good times!
Let's all join together to help make that dream a reality!
Eh, sounds like a lot of work to me. I have no problem getting sober enough once in awhile long enough to drive to the liquor store.
I had my doc write me a scrip for a driver, but Blue Cross denied the claim, said they were available over the counter.
It's true – you can buy one in just about any Home Depot parking lot.
“When the head is rotten, it puffs up and turns black, and the room is filled with the stench of decay. Also, brainnssss,” Abdullah was quoted as saying of the Pakistani leader.
Sounds like drugs just make you worse at skillfully avoiding DUI checkpoints.
Ironically, so does DUI. Or so I have found.
“should serve as a wakeup call,”
Thanks for the offer but my Dextroamphetamine cocktail works just fine.
Drugs are bad, mkay.
Fuck, How many WAKE UP CALLS are you assholes going to burden me with.
Look at these wake up calls. Jeeeeezus!
9/11
Illegal Immigrants
The deficit
The debt
Some shit Glenn Beck said
Drunk Driving
Child Obesity
Drugs
Did I mention 9/11
My Samsung PT-987 Bedside Alarm Clock with programmable CD Player
The next time someone tells me such and such is a "Wake up call" I'm going to politely scream in their ear from about two inches way:
"THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX ASSHOLE!"
I take this as a wake up call.
Wait, does crazed ear screaming somehow NOT constitute a wake-up call?
Did you mention that no drugs were found in any of the 9/11 victims or demolition sites?
Maybe we all just need a SHUT UP Call once in a while….
This is just some more gubmint lies!! I'm on my fourth D.U.I. and I ain't kilt nobody what didn't have it coming.
Let's let the drugged up drivers & the oldsters who mix up the brake & the accelerator & end up driving into the Golden Corral have a good old fashioned Nascar type event. Win win…at least for the rest of us.
The whole Wikileaks thing is farcical. All of the diplomats and government officials worldwide know that these things are being said, thought and done, and now they must all pretend to be outraged by the revelations. Hillary should just brazen it out, display umbrage at the leakers, and act offended if the people we dissed in the "cables" don't apologize. All with one hand on the nuts that Rendell and others told us she has, ghetto/Guido style.
Sped kills!
Sorry, didn't have time to throw in that extra 'e' there….
& in other LatAm news, am I the only one who doesn't find the State Dept.'s handling of Nestor Kirchner's death entirely inappropriate? Yes, the probing of the widow's mental state could have been pursued more tactfully, but most normal people (so, not psychopaths) do have some difficulty in maintaining routine following a loved one's death, particularly a spouse.
Drugged up drivers crash a lot…and we're paying these people HOW MUCH? I expect their next pronouncement to be that our Sun will rise in the East tomorrow. I AM depressed.
Another nanny state outrage. Chugging Popov's with an ambien chaser at 85 mph while arguing with that shameless slattern of a girlfriend is a right every American has in the Constitution. Read the Constitution! Then read it again!
And we get to raise fat chillren too, if we want.
Why do you fuckers hate freedum?
Popov's? You commie bastard, drink something American like Jack Daniels.
Mr Lucas said Ecuador was "very concerned" by information revealed by Wikileaks linking US diplomats with spying on friendly governments.
Not so bad, Mr. Lucas. Most Latin American governments are "very concerned" that their big brother Partner in Progress will overthrow their elected government and install a tinhorn military dictator of its choosing.
If 90% of people who are driving are stoned, then the fact that only 25% of people in accidents are stoned is good news. So, if you are not driving stoned, now would be a good time to start.
So, Wikileaks has revealed the embarrasing, shocking secrets that people think Iran and South Korea are dangerous and that we ought to keep an eye on Pakistan. HEADS WILL ROLL!
grrr. I have heard this talking point so many times. With all due respect, I find it to be so self satisfied. I think anyone is hard pressed to pretend that you know all these things that are in these documents. They're written from a US perspective by the US Government, so expect them to have the same slant you'd get from the US media – the two being so closely entwined. But don't act like it is completely useless to have this stuff in front of you in paper, with a stunning amount of detail and nuance that will give foreign policy researchers, opinion makers, and historians giant throbbing wet boners.
Just saying.
Point taken. Duly humbled. Buzz harshed (smile emoticon).
Don't dropout factories lead to drunken and drugged driving? I am so depressed now I think I'm gonna pop some Valium…then I won't care about anything anymore. Excellent!
Drugged up motorists don't crash and die any oftener than completely clean and sober motorists — just once.
I'll give you my drugs when you take it from my cold, dead, rigor mortised to my steering wheel because I crashed into a ditch trying to dodge a squirell while on acid, hands!
This problem will go away as more Americans aren't able to fuel their cars or otherwise keep them running. Then we'll all just walk around in a haze and suffer less deadly mishaps.
I've seen The Walking Dead – that walking around in a haze thing comes to a crashing halt when someone shoots you in the head.
Ecuador makes sense. Those colorful blankets are superb at warding off DOS attacks.
I think Obama should just quit fucking around and name Sarah Palin as the new Arresting Foreign Nationals For Anti-American Activities Czar, with Michele Bachmann as the Chairman of the Congressional Oversight Committee.
Hilarity ensues!
Can you imagine how many highway deaths can be attributed to Doritos?
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