Patients Screwed Again by Big Pharma

There’s an interesting item in the latest AARP Bulletin about the huge pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, and its efforts to prevent the loss of mega-billions in revenue from the sale of their popular anti-cholesterol drug, Lipitor.


Pfizer’s patent on Lipitor has expired, you see, which means that there is now a much cheaper generic version available on the market, called atorvastatin.

But the moguls at Pfizer are not giving up. In fact, they have made deals with many of the health insurance companies, getting them to agree that their prescription drug plans will continue to pay for lipitor, but will NOT pay for atorvastatin.

Now, would one of you conservatives out there tell me again why we don’t need health care reform? Why we shouldn’t have a consumer watchdog? Why we don’t need to regulate these companies?

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The Tea Party says this guy is a socialist.

Barack Obama has been president for not quite 3 1/2 years. In that time, the stock market has gone up by more than 50 percent, corporate profits are the highest in history and taxes are lower than they've been in something like 30 years.

Obama ... a socialist?

Pretty much tells you all you need to know about the Tea Party, doesn't it!

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Makes You Want to Scream … or Cry.

At the latest debate in South Carolina among the Republican candidates, Newt Gingrich was asked if it was appropriate for President Obama to send the Navy Seals into Pakiston to kill Osama bin Laden.

Gingrich, ever the history professor, replied that Andrew Jackson knew how to deal with enemies of America: He killed them!

The crowd, a high-percentage of which consisted of evangelical Christians, cheered.

What a Bunch of Freakin' LOSERS!!

“On the campaign trail, Ron Paul said he does not like his milk homogenized. After this, Rick Perry said, ‘I am also not a fan of gay milk.’”
–Conan O’Brien

“In Sioux City, Iowa, there was another debate between the seven Republicans running for president. All your favorites were there: Grumpy, Dopey, the other Dopey, Romney, Bashful, another Dopey, and Happy.”
–Jimmy Kimmel

Best description yet of the collection of bozos chasing the Republican nomination: A clown car!

(Thanks to Honolulu Notes for these!)

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A Message to the American Electorate from Teddy

"It’s not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again … who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.”

-- Theodore Roosevelt

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How to Deal with Arrogant Twits in Congress.

As you probably know, I write another blog, the focus of which is travel and more specifically train travel. I try to keep politics out of it, but that's sometimes difficult. Many of the Republicans, you see, have been trying to starve Amtrak to death for many years and, with many of those clowns, it's a case of ideology trumping common sense.


I'm involved with the National Association of Railroad Passengers, a non-profit, non-partisan advocating more and better train service for America. We meet every year in Washington and spend one full day visiting Congressional offices urging, among other things, adequate funding for Amtrak.

Want to know what we run up against? Last year, one of our members was meeting with an aide to a Republican congressman from Alabama and was relating how the U.S. has fallen years behind even third world countries in rail transportation. At that point, the aide interrupted and said to our member, “If you’re going to continue running down America, we have nothing further to discuss.”

There is only one way to deal with people like that: Vote their bosses out of office.

Calvin ... My Hero

There are very few cartoonists who deserve the genius label. Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, is one.