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Open thread March 31, 2017

Dan Crawford | March 31, 2017 8:48 am

Comments (13) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
13 Comments
  • EMichael says:
    March 31, 2017 at 10:31 am

    So a lot of texts going back and forth with family last night.

    The first was:

    “So, who are going to play the roles of Redford and Hoffman in the movie?”

    We could not come up with anyone cause no one can figure out if there is, or who will be, Woodward and Bernstein.

    Lots of back and forth only came up with a title:

    “All The AH’s Men”

    which we finally agreed with after turning down some disrespectful titles.

    Then we decided that Flynn was a really, really stupid Deep Throat. And that role could only be played by Adam Sandler, as he did not have to step out of character.

  • Denis Drew says:
    March 31, 2017 at 1:57 pm

    While looking at this headline in Medical News Today, this morning …

    … How to use long-acting insulin: Types, frequency, peak times, and duration
    Written by Alyse WexlerReviewed by Alana Biggers, MD, MPH
    http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/316674.php …

    … I thought the normal thought of how a lot “innovation” (not necessarily this story’s) is just to stretch out patents — to retain top prices.

    Then a deeper connection: a lot of these innovations could be achieved at a much earlier date if it were not for the patent string out.

    We know that Gilead was on its way to a much less harmful version of its HIV drug (“old” version harms a percentage more of patients’ bones and kidneys every year) — but stopped for five years to let the patent run out five years later.
    http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gilead-lawsuit-20160712-snap-story.html

    There are really hundreds of thousands of university researchers all over the country begging for grants. I believe 300,000 are doing government paid pharmacy research right now. Makes no difference to them whether you and I or big pharma pays.

    What this adds up to is that for-profit patent research cannot speed up new drugs — but it can and does slow them down. Not to mention that when big pharma actually comes up with a new drug nowadays, they price it so high nobody can afford it. (See last open thread below.)

    From John LeCarre’s (author’s note) at the end of (i)The Constant Gardner(/i):
    “There is no Dypraxa, never was, never will be. I know of no wonder cure for TB that has recently been launched on the African market or any other— or is about to be— so with luck I shall not be spending the rest of my life in the law courts or worse, though nowadays you can never be sure. But I can tell you this. As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard”

    Gilead wants $300 billion to cure every Hep C case in the US — not some poor African country — 600 X what it costs to manufacture. That’s how much the whole country spends on all drug research ($25 billion tax paid; $50 billion private) for four whole years. Can’t wait to find out what you’ll be bled to cure your Alzheimer’s. (Wonder what the Manhattan Project cost in today’s dollars? — wait; Goggle says $27 billion.)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

  • The Rage says:
    April 1, 2017 at 1:00 am

    Now Trump wants a Russian Steel company to make the parts for the “keystone” pipeline. Good grief.

  • Beverly Mann says:
    April 1, 2017 at 2:56 pm

    Please sign this petition if you give a damn about about this:

    https://www.change.org/p/10422950/share.

    I posted this message when signing the petition: God. This is beyond disgusting. I signed several petitions about this a year ago, but didn’t know then that this so-called festival began only seven years ago. My suggestion, as it was seven years ago: U.S. and international boycotts of products made in China, including products ordered directly from China from Amazon and eBay and the like.

  • Warren says:
    April 1, 2017 at 3:17 pm

    Should India start banning imports from the U.S. because of our beef?

    Should Muslim countries not deal with us because of our barbecue festivals?

  • Beverly Mann says:
    April 1, 2017 at 3:49 pm

    I would LOVE to see international condemnation of what happens in Big Ag processing plants and chicken and pig and lamb and dairy farms, Warren. As I understand it, beef farming itself isn’t torture, due to the nature of how beef cattle are raised and what their needs are.

    I’ve been a semi-vegetarian now for about five years. I eat fish, eggs, dairy products and occassionally chicken byproducts–gizzards, hearts livers, since no one farms and processes poultry for these parts; they’re just byproducts. But I’m not hypocritical enough to condemn others for eating what I ate mot of my life.

    But I do condemn the awfulness of the torture involved in the raising and transporting and killing of dogs for food.

  • Beverly Mann says:
    April 1, 2017 at 4:22 pm

    No Deep Throats yet in this one, and there probably won’t be any, EMichael. But LOTS OF Shallow Throats. Flynn being one of them.

  • Denis Drew says:
    April 1, 2017 at 8:35 pm

    For some reason couldn’t comment at 100 Best Blogs post.

    What does an Alexa score of 798,249 mean? ???

    • run75441 says:
      April 2, 2017 at 10:29 am

      Dennis:

      It was not meant to be commented on and Dan closed it off to comments. The Alexa Score is just another way to rate popularity of a blog. Even though AB is 47th(?), we do not rate high on the Alexa Score. To be in according to that score you have to be 10,000 or below.

    • Dan Crawford says:
      April 2, 2017 at 4:24 pm

      Hi Denis….for example, Naked Capitalism scores about 69,000, Economists View about 110,000….but you will have to read on how it is determined. AB is a small niche blog but we manage to do well in our small category.

  • Warren says:
    April 1, 2017 at 10:40 pm

    I suspect, Beverly, that the Chinese practices in raising other animals are no better.

  • ilsm says:
    April 2, 2017 at 7:41 am

    if still hunting

    Russians in 2020…..

    no there, there.

    no woodward pop up

    however, the hose

    clamp on the “sources”

    is there

    who ordered

    surveilling

    the opposition?

    investigate Obama!

    hard though

    the deepest secrets

    are the ones

    about how

    they subvert

    the US constitution

    HRC did not

    put that on

    Chappaqua server

  • EMichael says:
    April 4, 2017 at 8:36 am

    Nothing quite like semi-haikus written by misinformed imbeciles.

    “The right-wing media is really excited about the new scoop from Eli Lake, national security columnist for Bloomberg View. As connoisseurs of President Trump’s Twitter feed know, in the alternative reality inhabited by the president and his admirers, the central scandal rocking Washington is not about Trump’s possible connections to Russia and what it means for its meddling in our election. Rather, it’s about the potential “unmasking” of Trump campaign figures that may have been caught up in incidental surveillance of foreign targets. “Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends,” Trump tweeted on Monday morning. “ ‘Spied on before nomination.’ The real story.” Thus it was a big deal when Lake reported that Susan Rice, President Obama’s former national security adviser, had sought to identify Trump associates inadvertently recorded in American surveillance operations. Suddenly, Trump’s “real story” had a villainess. Soon #SusanRice was trending on Twitter.

    “White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter,” Lake’s piece begins. Sounds scandalous! At least, it does unless you read down to the ninth paragraph, which says, “The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice’s unmasking requests were likely within the law.”

    That means that even if Lake’s reporting, which relies on two anonymous sources, is completely correct, Rice did nothing wrong. There is no “unmasking” scandal. The whole thing is bullshit, a reality TV storyline jointly spun by Republicans and the right-wing media. It’s a clever bit of misdirection and mystification meant to do two things. First, it’s supposed to validate the president’s March 4 tweet claiming that Obama put a “tapp” on his phone during the presidential campaign, though it does no such thing. Second, the “unmasking” drama is meant to make it seem as if the real scandal lies in the investigation into the Trump team’s foreign contacts—which Trump would have us believe was politically motivated—and not the contacts themselves.

    There is no “unmasking” scandal.

    In fact, it would have been a dereliction of duty for the Obama administration, which was still in charge of the country’s national security, to ignore suspicious contacts by members of the Trump transition team. After all, at the time, the FBI investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russian attempts to subvert the election had already begun.”

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/i_hope_susan_rice_was_keeping_tabs_on_trump_s_russia_ties.html

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