Shorts

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  Shorts!

  Senator Schumer has latched onto the priority distraction issue of our century... DRUGS:
  

  Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Sunday that colleges need to crack down on "academic doping," or the use of stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin as a study aid.
  
  "There are better ways to pull an all-nighter and stay up. There's coffee, there's things like NoDoz," he told CBS affiliate WCBS in New York. "For somebody to call up and say 'well, my doctor prescribed it at home, send me pills, here's the prescription number...' that's not good enough...If a student gets 100 or 200 Adderall pills, even if they are legitimately entitled, they may lend a bunch to their friends."
  
  ...

  When the economy is in the tank, the public is scared shitless about terrorism, standards of living are rapidly declining for the 99% while the 1% soars far above everyone else... that's exactly the right time to talk about drugs, specifically, about making more drugs illegal. I always knew Schumer (D-NY) was smart, but I never fully realized how much of his smarts resides in his ass...
  
  How was it Bart Simpson put it? To the obvious tune...
  

  When I can't stop my fiddlin'
  I just takes me Ritalin
  I'm poppin' and sailin', man!

  Once, and only once, in my college days, I took a prescription strength stimulant, intending to stay up all night doing a blockbuster physics homework assignment. (What's that? Oh... I got the pill from my mother. Doctors handed them out like candy in those days.) I did stay up all night. I also walked around the double‑double block in our neighborhood three times in a row. But I did not get my homework done. Stimulants do not stimulate the intellect, they just keep you awake; most bright students realize that after using them a time or two. Schumer just needs to distract his constituents from the lousy economy that his (and my) political party has every opportunity to fix, but isn't fixing.
  

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• President Obama's approval rating plunges! Who'd 'a' thunk it... after his IRS is alleged to have targeted conservative groups (yeah, I know; they targeted other groups, too), his DoJ tried an old Republican trick of subpoenaing journalists' communications with sources, and his NSA (? well, whoever's NSA) appears to be surveilling every damned phone call and email and text message originating with or transmitted to an American, a CNN/ORC survey [.pdf] marked a precipitous drop in Obama's approval rating, from 53%-45% a month ago to 49%-51% now. Who knew Americans cared about the little things... taxes, privacy, warrantless searches... See the .pdf for a breakdown by issues.
  

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• Via Attaturk at FDL, The Guardian reports bad news from Iraq:
  

  A blistering string of apparently coordinated bombings and a shooting across Iraq killed at least 51 and wounded dozens Sunday, spreading fear throughout the country in a wave of violence that is raising the prospect of a return to widespread sectarian killing a decade after a U.S.-led invasion.

  Pretty soon, their deaths due to firearms will approach America's own...