Devolution

Its seems, given evidence from D.C., that the Republic has devolved from republic to democracy to kleptocratic kakistocracy.

No. No links. I’d have had to do one per letter in each sentence in this post. Just read the “news” and weep.


(Of course, such a devolution was assured once our “feddle gummint” started down the road into a more and more democratic reality. See this blogs header for but one of the reasons… )

Stopped Clocks, Blind Pigs and All That

Now, we can add radical leftists to the list of improbable stumblers-upon-truth:

The level of anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my lifetime. Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error. For over 30 years, real incomes have stagnated or declined…The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are now reveling in record bonuses while official unemployment is around 10 percent and unemployment in the manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels. The financial industry preferred Obama to McCain. They expected to be rewarded and they were. Then Obama began to criticize greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: they were going to shift their money to the Republicans. So Obama said bankers are ‘fine guys’ and assured the business world: ‘I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.’ People see that and are not happy about it. People want some answers. They are hearing answers from only one place: Fox, talk radio, and Sarah Palin.

And what radical right-wing “tea bagger” terrorist said that? Noam Chomsky

I understand that Satan’s breaking out his long underwear.

While he was at it, Chomsky said a few other surprising–for a radical leftwing “intellectual” (yes, scare quotes around intellectual in reference to Chomsky’s retarded, reactionary excuses for advancing his socialist agenda. His legitimate contributions to linguistics are another very different story). Notably, taking note of all the swooning over The Ø!’s rhetoric,

“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio, and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering…”

Yep, just another radical right-wing “tea bagger” racist spewing hate at a café au lait cyanide-laced Oreo in the White House. Noam Chomsky, of all people.

What The Ø!’s Policies Seem Aimed to Accomplish

This.

[T]he crucial issue in Kyrgyzstan was that the prices were driven up by government fiat, albeit following a decision to remove subsidies which had enabled energy to be sold at less than the cost of production. It can be assumed, from this, that where government action is directly responsible for price hikes, governments will take the flak.

LIAR!

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” (B. Hussein Obama-Soetoro, Dover, NH)

Emphasis unnecessarily added.

Translation: “firm pledge” = “bald-faced lie”. Go ahead: read his lips.

Unintended Consequences Usually Result From Thoughtless Actions

Well, thoughtless or uncaring or both. I really despise arrogant stupidity. Case in point today: the FDA. Anyone with more active brain cells than a head of cabbage could have foreseen this:

A centuries-old drug [colchicine] used to treat excruciating gout pain had cost just pennies a tablet—until last year. Now, the retail price has skyrocketed to more than $5 and some of the manufacturers have ceased production amid a battle over marketing rights.

You see, the FDA decided a few years ago that in order to bring “grandfathered” drugs under its umbrella, it’d offer exclusive marketing rights to market such drugs to pharmas that would place them in FDA-approved clinical trials to establish FDA-approved dosages, side-effects and what not–despite the fact that such grandfathered drugs all have long enough histories of use to establish such things already.

Long enough histories? Well, for colchicine, that’s certainly the case!

The price increase is an unintended consequence of the FDA’s nearly four-year-old initiative to regulate unapproved drugs. These medicines were sold before the FDA was established, and therefore weren’t required to undergo approval. After decades of use, the medicines are considered safe by doctors, but haven’t been proven to satisfy the agency’s standards. Colchicine’s use has been traced back to the sixth century, according to the FDA.

URL Pharma did just that with colchicine and now is charging a price for the drug that is commensurate with its need to make a profit–and recover the costs of the FDA-approval-process clinical trials it paid a third party to run.

Anyone with even one active brain cell more than a head of cabbage could have foreseen that result. Since I assume there must be more than one active brain cell at the FDA, then “unintended consequences” simply means that the one (or perhaps more–hey! it could happen!) active brain cells at the FDA either just didn’t care about “unintended consequences” or any active brain cells at the FDA are simple too stupid or immoral (not giving a damn about the consequences of one’s actions is definitely immoral) to be classed as human.

The same government that gives us the Post Office, the EPA, the Department of “Education” and the FDA is going to determine what you can and can’t do regarding your health care on a much, much more intimate basis come soon. Now, isn’t that rally good news?

Imagine how much aspirin would cost if the FDA lures some pharma into this procedure–IF it could even pass FDA-approved clinical trials given all its negative side effects!

Just shoot me.

Energy Star Award: Gasoline-Powered Alarm Clock

Seriously.

As Jerry Pournelle says (at the link),

“Now the government that approves an Energy Star Certificate for a gasoline powered alarm clock will now in essence take over administering the Health Care System in the United States. Good luck, America.”

Be sure to follow the link to the NYT article from the comments at Pournelle’s site.

Obama’s Pet Gerbil

The Ø! has a powerful deterrent against those who might seek legal means to depose his unconstitutional reign. This is what we’d get if The Ø! were removed from office:

Now, doesn’t that send chills of outright dread down your spine? A politician with the intelligence of a brain damaged gerbil and the ethics of a rabid squirrel in the oval office. A chilling prospect.