LOL
Posted on 11/08/2004 11:08:45 PM PST by upchuck
Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin' dog? Now, you know you cannot keep a dog that kills chickens, no matter how fine a dog it is otherwise.
Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing'll smell so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.
The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.
And at least Democrats won't have to clean up after him until it is real clear to everyone who made the mess.
In some circles, that will be seen as sour grapes. But in Texas, we've been losing elections to the demagogic triad of God, gays and guns long enough to be pretty cynical about how it works out. I'm sure millions of Americans voted for George W. under the honest impression that he stands for moral values — family, patriotism, faith in God. I'm sure it's the Democrats' fault that such a silly ruse is allowed to stand. What Bush actually does stand for is nicely summed up by a rather common news story that got stuck on the business pages lately.
In September, Merck & Co., the huge drug manufacturer, pulled Vioxx off the market. Vioxx was a popular pain-killing, anti-arthritis drug, but Merck said it was putting patients' safety first. A new study from the Federal Drug Administration showed high doses of Vioxx triple the risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death.
From there, the story bifurcates — it takes two directions. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa revealed that the FDA had tried to silence the author of the study, Dr. David Graham, associate director of science in the Office of Drug Safety. Grassley said the FDA first sat on Graham's study and that then he was "ostracized" and "subjected to veiled threats and intimidation."
The Wall Street Journal followed the other fork, finding internal memos from Merck showing that company officials may have been aware of the dangers of Vioxx as long ago as 1996, including a memo apparently instructing its sales reps to "dodge" the question when doctors asked about the cardiac record of Vioxx.
In short, we have a toothless regulatory agency in the pocket of the industry it is supposed to patrol. We have an administration-wide contempt for science and plain facts. And the allegation against the folks at Merck is that they were making such enormous profits on a drug that killed people that when they knew or suspected it was killing people, they kept right on selling it. When the information that Merck had known for a long time about Vioxx and heart attacks became public, the company's stock fell by 9.6 percent.
That's the system George W. Bush stands for: where a corporation can knowingly kill people for profit and, when it finally comes out, everyone knows the penalties will be so light the company doesn't even lose a tenth of its worth. Hey, just a little bump in the road.
We sure don't want any of that terrible, burdensome government regulation to control that kind of behavior, do we? We sure don't want an FDA that listens to its own scientists and acts promptly, do we? We sure don't want anyone to sue these monster corporations, do we? I bet if it were possible to compare the odds of an American getting killed by a negligent regulatory agency and rapacious corporate behavior versus an American getting killed by a terrorist, it would turn out we need to be a lot more scared of rank greed and its enablers than we do of terrorists. And that's not counting what the corps. (pronounced corpse) steal and mess up.
So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad. Want to feel better? Eat a sour grape, then do something immediately, now, today. Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country — join something, send a little money to some group, call somewhere and offer to volunteer, find a politician you like at the local level and start helping him or her to move up.
Think about how you can lend a hand to the amazing myriad efforts that will promptly break out to help the country recover from what it has done to itself. Now is the time. Don't mourn, organize.
My #40 ........Is Molly still living under the 6th street bridge in Austin ?
But you gotta admit she's folksy!
Ya got Me, the closest I get to Austin these days is my Chiropractor in Round Rock and that is close enough.
So what makes Molly think the rest of the country won't keep voting for God, gays and guns, just like Texas? Texans haven't gotten tired of it, why should we. I reckon the movement's getting stronger not weaker. Or is Molly saying that Texans are dumber than the rest of us?
That IS her neck.
You had your 15 minutes, Molly- it's over.
Yeah, in that she's about the size of several folks...
< So, fellow progressives... >
This is there big code. Progressives instead of liberals. Ain't foolin' anybody, Molly. Buh, bye!
Way to go! I agree.
It's the family's secret bean recipe.
Tasty, but dangerous!
Molly's hitting the Sterno again...
Let me see: according to Molly's ahem "logic", drug companies like their products to do harm to the people who take them because that will be good business??!!! Typical Ivin's leftist nonsense. She understands nothing and has learned nothing in her sixty years or so on earth. What a waste of oxygen.
Molly Ivins wants it to do what? Be more intrusive, ask for a dozen MORE rail carloads of paperwork for every drug?
The truoble is that we have a federal agency and regulations TOO BIG by orders of magnitde -- one that *by it's very existance* precludes the formation of effective private and state-by-state or state-jointure operations. The regulatory market as NO comptetition -- only the paperwork tyranny of the FDA.
The FDA sets such a course of arcanity and a multitude on multitude of petty scrutinies that no honest company nor straight-forward person can answer correctly. The result is a chaos of the corrupt, crooked and incompetent -- willing to play a meaningless game -- to produce the carlods of petty arcanities and dot the billion i's, all in place of and in an environment where real safety issues can not be reliably researched nor discussed.
"The Wall Street Journal followed the other fork, finding internal memos from Merck showing that company officials may have been aware of the dangers of Vioxx as long ago as 1996,..."
I forget, who was President in 1996? Some GOP thug? Was it Reagan? Nixon? I just can't recall!
Molly Ivans stinko alert.
This is in contrast to what the Democrats stand for: a corporation can knowingly kill people for profit so long as the trial lawyers get 40% of the lawsuit settlements.
Of course, from 1996 to 2001, no one had a clue that there might be a problem with Vioxx, right?
I think that Molly is describing the Clinton administration!
Regardless of Molly's rantings, Merck is in for a world of hurt.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.