!['Peyote (Lophophora Williamsii)' [Shutterstock]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uzBOMZLp7NXt93eF6R6RQ-1e3IV9v6Yrrmc0vYjQOOIw9u8ci02zquz2yBI4AT1Odr_82Aw-8PJVDwUpJ5p01872gwV2Ku8_Lkw4O6UKuk9jM-KE1WDYHAY61GMZBam2lxkD18tPUOCGT_VgxQxQyfXHTgZEfhLw=s0-d)
“People say it’s a hallucinogen, which it’s
not,” cult member David Hamblin said during a protest in Salt Lake
City. “It’s a plant portal to the spirit world."
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Wingnuts Swarm The Special Olympics Page To Attack Michelle Obama And Disrespect Athletes
Is nothing off limits? Weekly Tin Foil
WTF: Rubio Says The U.S. Will Have To ‘Defend Iran From Israel’ Under Nuclear Deal
Rubio gets to wear the tin foil hat this week.
Last Week In Police Brutality And Corruption
You can tell a lot about police by looking at who they arrest, and by looking at who they don’t arrest — each other.
'Christian' Extremists Form A New Caucus Dedicated To Republican jesus
This Week In Bad Christianity
Some So-Called ‘christians’ Are Just Plain Appalling
Insensitive, racist, clueless appropriation of a necessary movement
is just one of the many things the bad 'christians' did this week.
Top 5 Stupid Things Pseudo-Christians Said Last Week
Bestiality, the Third Reich, Donald Trump, Russia… the pseudo-christians had a lot to say last week. All of it ridiculous.Wednesday, July 29, 2015
The Daily Drift
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Republicans - No chicken wings for you ... !
Today is - National Chicken Wing Day
Don't forget to visit our sister blog Carolina Naturally
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Government Granted Patent Monopolies Are Not The Free Market
Those folks at the Wall Street Journal
are really turning reality on its head. Today it ran a column by Robert
Ingram, a former CEO of Glaxo Wellcome, complaining about efforts to
pass "transparency" legislation in Massachusetts, New York, and a number
of other states. This legislation would require drug companies to
report their profits on certain expensive drugs as well as government
funding that contributed to their development.Ingram sees such laws as a prelude to price controls. He then warns readers:
"There is no surer way to bring pharmaceutical innovation to a halt in the U.S. than letting governments decide how much companies can charge for their products or harassing them into lower prices. It also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how pharmaceutical research works. Scientific discoveries involve trying and failing, learning from those failures and trying again and again, often for years."
Ingram bizarrely touts the "flowing pipeline of new wonder drugs spurred by a free market," which he warns will be stopped by "government price controls." This juxtaposition is bizarre, because patent monopolies are 180 degrees at odds with the free market. These monopolies are a government policy to provide incentives for innovation. Mr. Ingram obviously likes this policy, but that doesn't make it the free market.
Of course there are other ways that the government can finance research and development, such as paying for it directly. It already does this to a large extent. At the encouragement of the pharmaceutical industry it spends more than $30 billion a year on mostly basic research conducted through the National Institutes of Health. It could double or triple the amount of direct funding (which could be contracted with private firms like Glaxo Wellcome) with the condition that all findings are placed in the public domain.
This would eliminate all the distortions associated with patent monopolies, such as patent-protected prices that are can be more than one hundred times as much as the free market price. This would eliminate all the ethical dilemmas about whether the government or private insurers should pay for expensive drugs like Sovaldi, since the drugs would be cheap. It would also eliminate the incentive to mislead doctors and the public about the safety and effectiveness of drugs in order to benefit from monopoly profits.
"There is no surer way to bring pharmaceutical innovation to a halt in the U.S. than letting governments decide how much companies can charge for their products or harassing them into lower prices. It also represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how pharmaceutical research works. Scientific discoveries involve trying and failing, learning from those failures and trying again and again, often for years."
Ingram bizarrely touts the "flowing pipeline of new wonder drugs spurred by a free market," which he warns will be stopped by "government price controls." This juxtaposition is bizarre, because patent monopolies are 180 degrees at odds with the free market. These monopolies are a government policy to provide incentives for innovation. Mr. Ingram obviously likes this policy, but that doesn't make it the free market.
Of course there are other ways that the government can finance research and development, such as paying for it directly. It already does this to a large extent. At the encouragement of the pharmaceutical industry it spends more than $30 billion a year on mostly basic research conducted through the National Institutes of Health. It could double or triple the amount of direct funding (which could be contracted with private firms like Glaxo Wellcome) with the condition that all findings are placed in the public domain.
This would eliminate all the distortions associated with patent monopolies, such as patent-protected prices that are can be more than one hundred times as much as the free market price. This would eliminate all the ethical dilemmas about whether the government or private insurers should pay for expensive drugs like Sovaldi, since the drugs would be cheap. It would also eliminate the incentive to mislead doctors and the public about the safety and effectiveness of drugs in order to benefit from monopoly profits.
These Never-Before-Seen Photos Of The White House Reaction On 9/11/01 Are Nauseating
Cheney was the first in charge, and some of these images will make you sick to your stomach…
Reality Is Winning
Fox News makes a big show of being the “most trusted” source of news,
but that claim, like much of what we find on the wingnut
network is a lie,...Even Republicans Are Starting To Hate Republicans
A new poll proves that the circus they are calling the 2016
pretender race may be turning off Republicans more than anyone, but
it’s also turning...No, Wingnuts, The Teabagger Affiliated Mass Shooter Was Not A Liberal ‘Obama Supporter’
Can you say “desperate?”
Another Mass Shooting, But The Republican Cabal Makes It Clear Some Lives Don’t Matter
Bill O'Reilly will not call for a law to protect movie-goers from
white men carrying handguns in theaters. Because Second Amendment rights
…Trump May Be The Worst Thing To Happen To The Religio-Wingnuts
Trump doesn't seem impressed by the religio-wingnuts and has shown no
signs that he feels the need to impress them, or even that they matter…
This is nothing new, of course: Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told a caller that dog would no longer protect the United States, thanks to marriage equality. Ever since the Manichaean Augustine of Hippo opened his mouth, religio-wingnuts have been looking for the city of dog, an effort which has left a morose dunghill in its place.
“Absolutely, absolutely,” Perkins replied,
enthusiastically agreeing with the caller: “[We] put ourselves in a very
vulnerable position” just like in “1973 when the court basically said
it’s open season on the unborn, there were consequences to that and I
believe it’s a part of removing dog’s hand of protection upon a nation.”
Right. Open season against blacks doesn’t presage anything dire, and that
has been with us since the first slave arrived on these shores,
centuries before Roe v. Wade. How about the genocide of the Native
Americans, which began even before the first slave arrived? Or how about
beating gays and transgenders? Or raping women? Or abusing the poor of
any background? None of that bothered dog?
Or if none of that moves you, how about what we do to our own children in this country?
When jesus said, “Let the little children come to
me” he didn’t mean hurry them on their way to heaven.
But once they’re out of the womb, that is precisely what Republicans do.
Where is Perkins’ head that only the unborn matter
to him, and not the living? jesus didn’t preach about or to fetuses. He
preached to the living.
And Perkins is not alone. Take Santorum, Paul, or Cruz who insists freedom is tyranny.
Walker, for crying out loud, after doing his best to destroy Wisconsin, said its dog’s plan that he now destroy the entire 50 states by becoming pretender.
Trump is crass and boorish, but he may prove
to be the dung-covered gem in the dunghill. He will not win, but for a
moment, a whole bunch of Republicans are forgetting about this dog thing. Unlike Walker and Cruz, Trump hasn’t claimed dog wants him to
run, or that he’s the messiah.
Trump says, “I’m a religious person. I go to cult. Do I do things that are wrong? I guess so.”
In fact, look what Trump told Frank Lutz last Saturday at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, when asked, “Have you ever asked dog for forgiveness?”
Compare this to Jeb, who eagerly explains he does so often. (You think you’ve been cringing? Put yourself in the shoes of the religio-wingnuts):
I’m not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring dog into that picture. I don’t.We I take, when we go, and church and when I drink my little wine – which is about the only wine I drink – and have my little cracker, I guess that’s a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed, OK? But, you know, to me that’s important, I do that, but in terms of officially, I could say, ‘Absolutely!’ and everybody, I don’t think in terms of that. I think in terms of, let’s go on and let’s make it right.
We all missed this thanks to his next dissing John McCain, but think about how far off the reservation he has gone with this.
His little glass of wine and his cracker. And he got a standing ovation at the end of his talk.
Trump, alone of all the Republican candidates, isn’t
acting like a frothing-at-the-mouth religious zealot. In fact, Ed
Kilgore at the Washington Monthly said, “everything about Trump screamed the oafish tycoon speaking the unaccustomed language of delusion.”
And yet it is Trump who is leading at the
polls. Attacking John McCain didn’t hurt him. Dismissing dog didn’t hurt
him. Of the two, I would argue that the latter is the more important.
It is an importance which cannot be overstated.
Erick Erickson claimed,
over at Red State, where pregnant women are animals, that, “Donald
Trump made a potentially fatal error yesterday in Iowa…. The media might
not have noticed. But it was the talk of evangelicals yesterday and
today at cult.”
But I don’t think anybody is listening to Erick Erickson. Certainly not enough to hurt Donald Trump’s polling numbers.
We can read at Right Wing Watch
that “Russell Moore of the southern baptist coven’s 'ethics' and 'religious 'liberty' cabal and Samuel Rodriguez of the mational hispanic 'christian' 'leadership' coven said last week that they didn’t
know a single evangelical who supports Trump…”
I don’t think anybody is listening to them either.
Is there actually a niche for a Republican pretender candidate who is not in the thrall of the likes of Tony Perkins?
Will all this come back to haunt Trump? Will the
bubble burst? Sure, it’s possible. It is also possible he can provide wingnuts a moment of clarity, to show the Republican base that
politics can be about something other than religion.
After all, Trump has yet to say a word about mantles
of protection or divine snit fits dropping flocks of birds out of the
sky. He just eats his little cracker and tries to do better.
This is not to make an argument for Trump. Rather,
look at the significance of the moment. However far Trump may go in the
2016 presidential race, he may have shown a way forward for Republican
candidates who are not in thrall to the religio-wingnuts, a sort of
anti-Reagan, which is ironic given all the comparisons being made to
Reagan by his adoring followers on Twitter.
For Trump, this isn’t a war of dog’s 'righteous'
Republicans against Liberal Satan-worshipers, but a war of Trump
against idiots and fools.
And you know what? That’s kind of refreshing.
***
Damn,
who would have thought Trump could do any good for America, but putting
the religio-wingnuts where they belong would be a great thing for
America. They do not matter - they never have - they are just
self-inflated perverted blowhards who's time it never was and it has
passed.
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