It’s not often that we get as good an example of RepubliCare as this.  When the treatment fleeces the recipients of everything they have and kills them, that’s the RepubliCare Death Benefit.  The Republican Reich provides death at no extra charge.  In this example, greedy Republican corporate criminals intentionally addict millions to opioids.  Then they feed them more and more pills, via the black market, until it kills them.

The Walgreens employee was bewildered by the quantity of opioids the company was shipping to just one store. Its pharmacy in Port Richey, Fla. (population 2,831) was ordering 3,271 bottles of oxycodone a month.

“I don’t know how they can even house this many bottles to be honest,” Barbara Martin, whose job was to review suspicious drug orders, wrote to a colleague in a January 2011 email. The next month, the company shipped another outsized order to the same store.

The email was among thousands of documents from corporations across the pharmaceutical and retail industries — internal memos, depositions, sales and shipping reports, experts’ analyses, and other confidential information — filed Friday in federal court in Cleveland by lawyers for cities, towns and counties devastated by addiction. They lay out a detailed case of how diverse corporate interests — far beyond the familiar players like Purdue Pharma — fed a deadly opioid epidemic that persisted for nearly two decades.

Little-known manufacturers of generic pills, superstores like Walmart and chain retailers like Rite Aid also flooded the country with billions of pills, according to the filings. The devastation was so extreme that one Ohio county resorted to a mobile morgue to handle all the corpses of people who died from overdoses… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

Rachel Maddow did a superior job of bringing this crisis to light.

Let me be clear.  Opioids are not the problem.  I use Oxycodone for phantom limb pain.  I very seldom need one and average one pill every month or two, but when I do, it’s the only thing that stops severe pain in a limb that no longer exist.  The problem is sales and marketing by Republicans that is so abusive that they are murdering people for profit.  These Republicans need to do hard time, and lots of it!

RESIST!!

“To Sleep: Perchance to Dream”

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

Yesterday we were all excited (and relieved!) to learn of TomCat’s securing his new Cat Box, with the move planned in about two weeks.

Over the years, TC has shared with us the travails at his other domiciles of inability to maintain a comfortable environment. It seemed to always be too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. He was never able to obtain a Goldilocks climate of “Just Right”.

Understandably, this has wreaked havoc with his ability to enjoy a good night’s sleep. But from his updates, it sounds like the new Madrona Apartments will provide the relief needed!

This is reassuring news, because we all know that Cats are known for their ability to sleep in any place and any position – and I’m here to provide proof.

It’s summer – so a grill is a great spot to catch a few winks

And we all know there is NO box too small that it won’t accommodate a (determined) critter.

Obviously a cat-lover had a hand in designing this cup holder

This beat-up old gym shoe might have had an “olfactory factor” adding to this guy’s snooze

This is definitely a prickly location

And who among us hasn’t sat in a classroom with a teacher who has had the same effect on us?

“No, really … I’m exercising!”

“VROOOOMMMM!”

I think this one is dreaming of Thanksgiving drumsticks

The next two prove that there are really FOUR different states of matter: Solid, Liquid, Gas and Cat

And while we’re talking science, who knew cats could defy gravity?

Monorail Cat

♫ “Rubber Ducky, You’re the One …” ♫

“Tell her to cut down on the bleach”

“Geez … this is getting old.  Hasn’t she ever heard of Swifter?”

There’s celebrating, and then there’s CELEBRATING!

But there could also be a gutter (quite lieterally) with your name on it!

Resident Donald Trump, Fuhrer of the Republican Reich is a racist.  How racist is he?  Every bone in his body is racist, down to and including his imaginary bone spurs.  He has received the official endorsement of the KKK and refused to disavow it.  Yesterday the House of Representatives voted to condemn him for his racist tweets against “the crew”.  Even four Republicans voted to condemn him.

The House voted on Tuesday to condemn as racist President Trump’s attacks against four congresswomen of color, but only after the debate over the president’s language devolved into a bitterly partisan brawl that showcased deep rifts over race, ethnicity and political ideology in the age of Trump.

The measure, the first House rebuke of a president in more than 100 years, passed nearly along party lines, 240 to 187, after one of the most polarizing exchanges on the floor in recent times. Only four Republicans and the House’s lone independent, Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, voted with all Democrats to condemn the president.

“I know racism when I see it, I know racism when I feel it, and at the highest level of government, there’s no room for racism,” said Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, an icon of the civil rights movement.

Some Republicans were just as adamant in their defense of Mr. Trump: “What has really happened here is that the president and his supporters have been forced to endure months of allegations of racism,” said Representative Dan Meuser, Republican of Pennsylvania. “This ridiculous slander does a disservice to our nation.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

I like the way Lawrence O’Donnell tells the story.

Why did all but four Congressional Republicans vote to mark themselves as actively complicit in their Fuhrer’s racism? They needed a badge with which to proclaim their own racism, when their sheets and hoods are in the laundry.

RESIST!!