Because Americans saved the cheese eating surrender monkeys?

I am loving that there is at least one headline saying that the US women's 4x100 team beat Jamaica. I mean, that it's in the headline, not just in the article. They set the world record, and they beat Jamaica--both facts deemed important enough to not just be above the fold, but in bold type.

But the articles about the men's 4x100 seem to be being written more slowly than after the 200 yesterday. And the photos lagging way behind. There are no days off at the Olympics! What is this jokery???

Oh, hey, I think one of the relay running women is from around here. She lives and trains somewhere else, but grew up here, and I didn't grow up here, so it's a tenuous connection, but good for her!

Charlie Pierce on Paul Ryan as the Republican VP:

Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare.

[link]

for a change, Hubby went to the ER and didn't get admitted. Yay! His intestinal tract is not fully blocked, this time. Here's hoping the drugs and the liquid diet allow all things to pass.

And kudos to Ramona the Wonder Phelebotimst, who got the IV into the vein in Hubby's elbow the very first time, whereas the last IV took four people, including the department head, and they started talking about using his neck for a site and they brought in the ultrasound machine to find a good vein.

I've never had a nurse pull out the ultrasound to get an extra-jugular IV, and they laughed when I told them the doctors at their sister hospital not only used an ultrasound for their EJ, but they also talked through it, with things like "Wait, no, that's an artery, right?"

I might be crap in most places, but I can pop a jugular. If you need machinery to find that...I don't think I want you sticking things into me. Please find an ER nurse.

Even the ER nurses can have trouble with Hubby, who's running out of useful sites. Ramona looked just a trifle smug when we heaped praises on her, and we left a comment card extolling her virtues when we left.

I see Charles Pierce had the same reaction I had to the timing of the Ryan announcement, which was that early Saturday is when you announce things you hope no one will notice.

Famous people have to do much more than non-famous people to prove that they've been libeled. I think they also have to prove that the story was spread with malicious intent, as well as being false.

wrod, Ginger. There's no *Saturday* news dump! Bazinga.

Well, there's a reason I have a portacath. Explicitly because the ER nurses asked me to. I had run out of sites. A litre of saline running in through my fingertip--technically I guess that's a usable site, but when they can't even get that...

And they were right. Knowing that I'm just five minutes away from medication...is this what normal people's lives are like?

Oh, wait--they're not getting IV pain meds.

But apart from that?