Sep 2, 2016

This Shit Is Bullshit

I've been listening in on this one for a while, and I think I've got my bearings now.

In short - this is more or less about a ConservaDem who needs to go the fuck away.  I don't want anyone to hurt him; I'm not wishing he'd get Ass Cancer and die after enduring long, bloody, painful attempts to save his miserable worthless hide; I just want him to be unemployed for a good long time.  I want him to live in a shitty basement for about 10 years while he works an occasional odd shift at The Dollar Store and has to eat what he can find in the dumpsters behind the local liposuction clinic.

Sen Joe Manchin D-WV
Seriously - fuck that guy.

In case you haven't heard, Joe Manchin's daughter (Heather Bresch) is the asshole CEO who has blown up the price on Epi-Pen.

According to reports, Bresch got her first job at Mylan working in the factory basement, when her well-connected dad asked the company’s then-CEO, Milan Puskar, for a favor. Later, a scandal erupted when it was discovered that West Virginia University, which had received a $20 million donation from Puskar and whose president was a Manchin and Bresch family friend, had awarded her an MBA although she had not completed the required coursework.
The school president and other administrators were forced to resign, but Bresch survived the controversy and has done very well indeed in the pharmaceutical business, rising through the ranks and at the same time learning how to adroitly manipulate government and its regulations — lessons for which life in a successful political family with its network of friends and colleagues prepared her well.
I guess what grates on my soul in the worst way possible is this: 

The drug is not the issue, the Epi-Pen itself is the issue. Epinephrine is pretty cheap and available as a generic - but the delivery method is the key. The Epi-Pen is amazing, and it's ridiculously effective and easy to use, and it's saved more than a few lives; and it's a great little peace-of-mind thing - and it's patented, which is the key to the whole banana.  

So Mylan expects a full and vigorous effort to enforce its patent rights under US Federal Law - at tax-payer expense of course - but they get to shift the jobs overseas; they get to dodge a shitload of the taxes by hiding out in The Netherlands, and they can jack the price by 500%, etc etc etc. And that little parlay is what pumps enough profit into Mylan's coffers to "justify" paying Ms Bresch almost $19 Million last year.

It's fucking immoral - and that's before we take a look at the campaign contributions bullshit that helps perpetuate it, because it's part of a fucked up System of Interlocking Interests that makes it profitable to hold people hostage while the people who take those hostages are doing it legally, and so, are completely out of the reach of "justice".

That's gotta change.

Like I said, I'm really not wishing for harm to come to any of them, but a well-placed runaway cement truck wouldn't exactly hurt my feelings.

Fight The Power

Sep 1, 2016

Today's Pix












Virginia 5th



Go to govtrack.us 

Type in your address in the search box.

Figure out where you are. Get your ass out there and scare up some action.

 

Today's Doc Maddow

Listen and learn - she has a doctorate in this shit, so there's something she can teach us.




And now that you've learned a little something about The Know Nothings, it gets really hard not to hear it when it pops up (starting at about 4:35 when Wolf is asking Trump about harassment).

Today's Other Tweet


Among Trump's Christian Right followers, I wonder if there's any inkling of "the mark of the beast" that filters through.

Cuz let's not try to fool ourselves - if we're going to be able to tell "the good ones from the bad ones", then everybody has to get a tag.

PS) this is very Slippery Slope-y, but sometimes those slopes are real and sometimes those real slopes are very slippery.

Aug 31, 2016

OMFuckingG

We CANNOT let this lowdown shit-speckled pile of moldy skunk weed become our president.


Can't wait to hear the post-game.

Today's Tweet



Yo, conservatives - horses know enough to share their stuff.  Why don't you?  When're you guys gonna stop being dumber 'n a horse?

And This Is Your Brain

...on a podcast

via You Are Not So Smart




Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist who lectures at Cardiff University and writes about brain stuff over at his blog, Brain Flapping hosted by The Guardian.
  • What's new with motion sickness?
  • Why does it feel so bad to break up?
  • What about Dunning-Kruger?
  • Is it paranoia that drives Anti-Intellectualism?

Ms Conway

From Policy Mic:
On Tuesday, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump unearthed remarks Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump's new campaign manager, made in January 2013 suggesting that rape is women's fault. If they weren't so weak, Conway suggested, they'd be able to fight off their attackers.
"If we were physiologically — not mentally, emotionally, professionally — equal to men, if we were physiologically as strong as men, rape would not exist," Conway said on the PBS show To the Contrary at the time.
"You would be able to defend yourself and fight him off."
I wonder if all the men who've been raped know it wasn't possible for them to have been raped.