PRICEY DRUGS AND NOT ENOUGH OF THEM

Jane Bryant Quinn in Newsweek (Sept. 27, 2004, p. 31) in discussing the use of Canadian drugs by Americans notes that Americans are prescribed the latest drugs while Canadians get by on older drugs, then she notes the obvious: drugs cost 50-80 percent less in Canada than in America. So, if Americans are prescribed the best drugs but fewer and fewer Americans can afford health care, “Who is all this splendid medicine for? Should our health care system continue its drive toward the best of the best, even though rising numbers of patients can’t afford it? Or should we direct our wealth toward letting everyone in on today’s level of care?”

And, more importantly, why are we letting drug companies do all the research? Why isn’t America funding a lot more research for drugs? Then the drug companies would lose their rationale for charging so much for their drugs, i.e. to recover their research costs. But that’s so anti-capitalistic, right? Or perhaps, it’s accepting that society has some pretty pressing needs which just don’t fit well into the scheme of profit taking corporations. Perhaps “big” government does have a place in the scheme of things, after all.

Listen. . . today I spent 3 and a half hours, standing in two lines at two locations before I could get my flu shot because Republicans think that the private sector is the best avenue to meet all of America's needs. Not so, if there's not enough profit in it, and that's why we're going to see so many older Americans die with flu this season.


FOR THE FOURTH TIME: TOLD YOU SO

It was bound to happen: the Iraqi government, sponsored by America, would become just like Hussein’s government in the way they treat resistance to its authority. Newsweek (Sept. 27, 2004, p. 34) reports the following:

“During the application process, new [Iraqi police] recruits are asked, ‘If you see a group of innocent people on the side of the road and your commander asks you to fire on them, would you?’”

Well, if you understand evolution as science does (see Steven Pinker’s, The Blank Slate) you already guessed it; of course they would. Like most soldiers, trained by tyrannous authority to obey rather than debate, Iraqi’s troopers would fire first and ask questions later; they would fob off the decision onto their officer’s shoulders. Why do you think only one American soldier among so many at Abu Ghraib found the courage to resist the atrocities that many of his comrades accepted without question?

Iraqi Sabah Khadim, an adviser at the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, explains further: “This is a national emergency, and all methods will be used. There really is an ‘Iraqi way’ of doing things. We will be vilified, but this is not the time to preach democracy.”

King George III’s representatives in America couldn’t have spoken more to the purpose when it came to his rebellious colonists.


LENNY BRUCE AND THE FCC

Well, I really ain’t got nothing to say about Lenny and his battle against censorship in public debate and the arts. When secretive conservatives are in command, you can bet the battle never ends and never will. When conservatives are busy doing undercover things undemocratic which will effect the long term well being of the average man, you damn well betcha they don’t want word to get out. Of course, these religious supporters of George Bush really don’t much care about liberty as they have no example of a democracy in their holy book. You could probably tell them George II was suspending the Constitution and they’d go along.

What this posting bit is about is Bill Maher who got bit by the conservative “anti-freedom of expression” bullet when it let fly because Maher was courageous enough to point out that a man flying a plane into a building and facing certain death by doing so was at least as courageous as our president loosing a long range missile or cannon shell into a distant spot in a city neighborhood. Which, of course, is exactly what Bush is ordering in the recent attacks on “suspected” terrorist safe houses. How else can we explain so many civilian casualties in this war?

Anyhow, Bill Maher complimented Lenny recently: “One generation plants the trees, another gets the shade,” Maher [told] Newsweek. “He’s definitely the guy who planted the trees.”
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“The facts roll off a Bushman’s back like rain off a shark skin coat.” —author anonymous