Public service announcement
 

I think dying from an OD of heroin sure beats the hell out of dying because you shot us because you hate drug users or being thrown in jail for 20 years for getting high.

This story is yet another reason to legalize drugs - so that we can regulate the purity/impurity and people can do them without dying.

a link to the video is here

caption, please
 

Lemme see here. Mebbe if I wind him counter-clock-wise tonight he'll reversorate to saying I'm doing a good job.

Public service announcement
 

If people obeyed the law and didn't sell drugs, we wouldn't have:
1.) users dying from an OD of heroin;
2.) dealers dying in a violent competition for sales territory;
3.) innocents getting caught in the crossfire of dealers' competition;
4.) hundreds of thousands less felony convictions every year;
5.) huge expenditures for police, courts and prisons.

And I don't hate anyone. I've only been arguing that people should obey the law. Thus,

I think being alive and free sure beats the hell out of dying from an OD of heroin or dying because I shot you or being thrown in jail for 20 years for getting high.

This story is yet another reason for people to obey the law until enough of change agents can change the law. Obeying the law seems like the best way to avoid overdosing, getting shot, or getting convicted and jailed on my dime.

And this whole story sucks. I see these stories about ODs and feel sorry for the parents 80% of the time. They didn't raise their kids to die at 35. Speaking of which, safe? The oldest "victim" out of 34 was 57, and that seemed like an aberration. I gotta wonder how many years heroin takes off a user's life.

Hello

This is awesome:

• CNN.com
  
  WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. This week there was an issue that hit home with voters and forced the candidates to rethink their scripts. It even walked off with the political play of the week.
  
  (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SCHNEIDER (voice-over): They're standing in line in Florida and Michigan, in New Jersey. The line goes around the block. Eager swing state residents lining up to vote? Not exactly. They're lining up for flu shots.
  
  DR. CHARLES GONZALEZ, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST: It's incredibly serious. We have half as much vaccine as we should have.
  
  SCHNEIDER: How did that happen?
  
  BUSH: We relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for the United States citizens.
  
  SCHNEIDER: Uh-oh. Sounds like outsourcing. The president had a solution.
  
  BUSH: We're working with Canada, hopefully they will produce a -- help us realize the vaccine necessary.
  
  SCHNEIDER: But hasn't Bush expressed problems with drug imports from Canada?
  
  BUSH: My worry is, it looks like it's from Canada, it might be from a third world. We have to make sure before somebody thinks they're buying a product, that it works.
  
  SCHNEIDER: President Bush made a plea to the public.
  
  BUSH: If you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot this year.
  
  SCHNEIDER: Sounds like rationing, something the president said would result from Kerry's health care plan.
  
  BUSH: Government sponsored health care would lead to rationing.
  
  SCHNEIDER: The government has the situation under control the president says.
  
  BUSH: The CDC responsible for health in the United States is setting those priorities and allocating the flu vaccine accordingly.
  
  SCHNEIDER: Isn't that government control?
  
  BUSH: My opponent wants the government to run the health care.
  
  SCHNEIDER: Maybe the answer is legal reform.
  
  BUSH: Vaccine manufacturers are worried about getting sued, and so therefore they have backed off from providing this kind of vaccine.
  
  SCHNEIDER: Kerry says the issue is the whole health care system.
  
  KERRY: There still aren't enough flu vaccinations. What's the president's solution? He says, don't get one if you're healthy. That sounds just like his health care plan to me, hope and pray you don't get sick.
  
  SCHNEIDER: The flu bug has infected the campaign. The side effect was the political play of the week.
  
  (END VIDEOTAPE)
  
  SCHNEIDER: What President Bush warns could happen under the Kerry health care plan, shortages, rationing, that's exactly what is happening now. So the issue is whether the Kerry health care plan would solve the problem, or as Republicans charge, make it worse.
  
  WOODRUFF: Is there any evidence yet how this issue is playing out politically? Do we see polls? Do we pick up what people are saying?
  
  SCHNEIDER: We don't have any direct evidence that it's having a political impact yet. We know it is a very big issue on voters' minds. They're very dissatisfied with the fact that there is a shortage and frankly many are looking for somebody to blame. When the administration is the incumbent administration, they're likely to take some hits.
  
  WOODRUFF: You know it's serious when you read that some states will fine or jail doctors and nurses who give flu shots to people who are not at high risk.
  
  SCHNEIDER: Right, and that sounds a lot like rationing.

link (thanks RT)

Hard to believe that CNN could actually go beyond reporting what each candidate said, but there it is.

Public service announcement
 

Thanks for your overly simplistic (and out of touch with the scientific evidence that drug addiction is a genetically-based mental illness) response. If you spent half as much time as you spend posting here researching what doctors and scientists have discovered about the biological basis of drug addiction, you might understand it better.

How do you know? There is plenty of evidence that drug addiction is inherited and also influenced by environment. Many drug addicts were raised by parents (or at least one parent) who were alcoholics or drug addicts themselves.

Heroin is an incredibly dangerous drug to become addicted to. I feel incredibly sorry for anyone who does become addicted to that drug. However, heroin is even more dangerous because its purity is not regulated by the government.

obsessive enough?
 

Daily updates on electoral-vote.com not enough? Here is a page that gives the probability that Bush will win the election if it were held immediately, based on the most recent polls from each state, and updated every hour.

Here's the trend they've seen over the last three weeks:

http://www.econ.umn.edu/~amoro/Research/probhistory.png

As of 10:00 a.m. PDT, here's the predicted distribution of electoral votes:

http://www.econ.umn.edu/~amoro/Research/predictions.png

Caveat: Garbage in, garbage out. They're looking at the same polling data everyone else is.

I'm not bad, I was just drawn this way
 

Weren't you just complaining about people being mean? I'm trying to do people a favor and keep them alive. You got a problem with that?

Overly simplistic? As compared to what, throwing out "this should be legal", with no plan whatsoever for making it so?

And I don't think I can read this into your words, but are you saying that someone is predisposed to pick up that illegal substance the first time? If so, my lord, how many other crimes can't the offenders help committing?

And are you seriously complaining about my post count? If you spent half a second in an inner city neighborhood watching what subsidies have done, you'd have another reason to oppose subsidies. Are you passing on the truth here to justify your own actions?

In any case, there is no need for me to explain why people become repeat offenders. If people just refused to put that needle in their arm the first time (i.e., if they obey the law in this regard), they wouldn't die of injectable heroin ODs. Is putting the needle in the arm the first time something people are predisposed to do? How 'bout rape and murder? How many other things do we give people a pass on?



You must be talking about the 15 or 20% that I don't feel sorry for. Please tell me you aren't saying something about your own upbringing here though.


Another federal boondoggle? I'm in favor of legalization, but I better think about that some more now.

ET change title

Moore does Tolkien
 

Unelected "King" Aragorn gets the Moore treatment, for invading the sovereign nation of Mordor

What a smug, pompous, arrogant asshole. God, the publicity has gone to his head.

He should immediately walk away from TDS if his is this attitude

PS- It's a damn shame that Kinsley/Carville or Buchanan/Novak were no longer hosting the show. Tucker is too, too nice and Begala was speechless

obsessive enough?
 

Slave, help me. The anti-bush guys said all that matters is Zogby, and he has Kerry up. Then, last poll, Zogby has Bush up, so now its not Zogby that matters anymore?

obsessive enough?
 

You'll find Zogby polls on that site.

obsessive enough?
 

Hello Mr. Slothrop. Good day to you sir. Zogby showed up on the main page for exactly one state, Arkansas. Not surprisingly, he showed Arkansas for Bush.

http://www.cpod.ubc.ca/polls/index.c...em&itemID=4629

A quick check of Google news for Zogby shows this. Bush 48%, Kerry 44%. Have a very, very, perfectly pleasant and wonderful day.

Hello

obsessive enough?
 

What you call the main page lists the single most recent poll for each state. Zogby is, apparently, the most recent poll for Arkansas. There are many other pages on that site, many of which list Zogby polls, including the tracking poll you found described through Google. You missed the banner at the top of the page, the very first link in which ("Reuters/Zogby") takes you to that poll.

obsessive enough?
 

Summoning an efficient market theory update: Kerry down to +115.

obsessive enough?
 

Per Zogby, Bush doesn't win the elctoral college unless he wins the popular vote by at least 6%, and more like 9%, and he's only at 4%. It will be rather delicious irony.

obsessive enough?
 

Five days ago, Zogby's tracking poll had Kerry up 3. Now Bush is up 4. (More here.) I have a hard time believing that things have been that volatile in that time. In the same time that Zogby has seen Bush gain 7, Rasmussen has had Kerry gain 1.5, and the WaPo (LV) has had Kerry gain 6 (through yesterday -- check that site in two hours for today's numbers). It's just all very strange. The polls are really all over the place.

obsessive enough?
 

This guy thinks they are being manipulated: http://www.poorandstupid.com/2004_10...93770288631266

obsessive enough?
 

so you're saying by Friday Bush'll be up 11? sell short Less!

Drug Imports
 

The NYT suggests that importation from Canada will have a negligible effect on drug prices in the states.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/16/bu...er=rssuserland

obsessive enough?
 

Luskin is a bit more of a markets expert than calling him "this guy" may suggest.

obsessive enough?
 

I know. But being that he's tied by a degree with a Bush Administrative Cabinent Secretary, I didn't want to taint the debate.

Drug Imports
 

I heard a lot of concerns from pharma lawyers this week about this stuff. How did we get to the point where our companies are selling stuff overseas at a lower profit than they sell it here? Was this negotiated by our administration and, if so, did our allies threaten to otherwise copy the drugs if we didn't sell it on the cheap? I'm serious, as I don't know the answer. To restate the question, what was Canada and Europe's negotiating position in this?

If they took the position that they would copy and/or ignore intellectual property, than along with defense spending, I think we've been given more than enough reason to start fighting back against the socialists and other freeloaders. But I may be wrong insofar as I don't know how we got to this point...

Hello

Rage used by the Machine
 

How incredibly ironic that the rought treatment at Gitmo exposed by the NYT includes listening to Rage Against The Machine played loudly. What a delicious Sunday this is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/po...rtner=homepage

Intellectually Honest
 

I recommend, especially to my Republican friends, the editorial from the Winston-Salem Journal .

I've been noting on this board that I wasn't sure why conservatives were so solidly behind Bush, given his record. The Winston-Salem Journal, which has been endorsing nothing but Republican presidential candidates for over 30 years, decided it was time to sit out an election on the endorsement front. It's interesting reading.

Intellectually Honest
 

In this vein, here's a conservative case for Kerry, by Clyde Prestowitz, an evangelical Christian who served in the Reagan Administration:

• As a former Reagan-administration official, registered Republican, born-again Christian, and traditional conservative, I am going to vote for John Kerry. So are many other old-line Republicans. Here's why.
  
  While the Bush administration calls itself "conservative," its use of the term is frankly Orwellian. It not only deprives the word of meaning, but also presents the administration's philosophy as the opposite of what it actually is.
  
  Conservatives have always believed in fiscal responsibility: in being sure you could pay your way and in providing for the future. Conservatives pay down debt, rather than adding to it. This doesn't necessarily mean balancing the budget every year, but at a minimum it means striving toward balance as a top priority.
  
  The Bush approach is completely at odds with such thinking. If any proof were needed, it was amply provided in the president's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. With Congressional Budget Office projections showing oceans of red ink for the indefinite future, President Bush promised more tax cuts. His audience cheered.
  
  Conservatives are often well off, but they understand that the best way to preserve the society in which they are doing so well is to ensure that all its members can survive at a reasonable standard of living. It was the conservative Otto von Bismarck, after all, who first introduced social-security programs in 19th Century Germany for just that reason.
  
  Conservatives do not loot the Treasury or bet the future health of their society on the chance that the best-case scenario will actually materialize. They provide for the worst case. So a conservative would have expected that the president's tax cuts and promises of more to come would at least have been accompanied by plans for cutting expenditures.
  
  That expectation would have been disappointed, however, as the president promised about $1 trillion of new spending programs that, given his tax cuts, can be paid for only with red ink.
  
  Which brings us to a second fundamental principle of conservatism: small government. From the founding of the Republic until now, conservatives have feared the threat to liberty posed by big government.
  Conservative icon Ronald Reagan came to power primarily by focusing on big government as the source of most of the country's problems. But the Bush administration has presided over a steady increase in the size of government, as federal expenditure has risen as a percentage of gross domestic product, after declining in the late 1990s.
  
  Conservatives have never been enthusiastic about foreign adventures or about messianic undertakings. John Adams made the point early in our history when he emphasized that "America does not go abroad to slay dragons."
  
  It was the liberal Democrats Woodrow Wilson and John Kennedy who committed the United States to making the world safe for democracy and to "bearing any burden and paying any price to assure the success of liberty." These are fine-sounding words, but they are not the words of conservatives. Thus, when President Bush promises to democratize the Mideast, conservatives cringe. So much so, in fact, that several former high-ranking officials of the Reagan and first Bush administrations have told me that they are not supporting the president for re-election.
  
  This is because they know that, administration rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, we are not safer today than we were three years ago. Far from destroying al-Qaida and cutting its alleged links with Saddam Hussein, we have made Iraq into a magnet for terrorists. Worse, there is a real possibility that Osama bin Laden could gain control of our ally Pakistan, with its nuclear weapons and operational long-range missiles. Safe? Not on your life.
  
  Nor are we freer. Conservatives are nothing if not steadfast defenders of individual rights, rule of law, and due process. Yet the Patriot Act and the procedures at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere have visibly infringed on all of these. It is ironic that even as it preaches about widening the circle of freedom abroad, the administration is reducing it at home.
  
  Before the current campaign, it might have been argued that at least in affirming the importance of faith and respecting those who profess it the administration had embraced traditional conservative views. But in the wake of the Swift Boat ads attacking John Kerry, even this argument can no longer be maintained. As an elder of the Presbyterian Church, I found that those ads were not at all in the Christian tradition. John McCain rightly condemned them as dishonest and dishonorable. The president should have, too. That he did not undermines his credibility on questions of faith.
  
  Some say it's just politics. But that's the whole point. More is expected of people of faith than "just politics."
  
  The fact is that the Bush administration might better be called radical or romantic or adventurist than conservative. And that's why real conservatives are leaning toward Kerry.

via Steve Clemons

Intellectually Honest
 

Board Motto (Hi Hank!)

Intellectually Honest
 

1.) Who?
2.) That last sentence should say that's why I'm voting against Bush. Its one thing to point to principles of conservatism that are allegedly being violated by Bush (I say allegedly because conservatives are not opposed to bringing Democracy anywhere feasible where it serves our interests... see his magnet-for-terrorists comment), and it would be something entirely different if he could point to even a single redeeming quality of Kerry. You guys got a Republican equivalent of Zell Miller (i.e., someone relevant) who supports Kerry, or are we going to hear from the son of Reagan's milkman in the '30s as the election gets closer.

Have a good day my good man.

Hello

Intellectually Honest
 

As far I understand it, the opposition to Kerry is based largely on the idea that Kerry and the Democrats are not serious about the war on terrorism. This is more on the order of a Happy Bed Time Tale for Young Republicans than it is based on anything, but, whatever.

Intellectually Honest
 

I haven't gone looking for prominent names, but I'm more interested in logic than names anyway.

A friend of mine who describes himself as conservative and who was a staunch Romney backer in the last gubernatorial election here phrased it pretty succinctly recently when he said that he would rather elect someone he disagrees with who is competant than someone he agrees with who is incompetant. His view was that when someone fails a 4 year job interview, you take your chance on the next acceptable candidate even if they graduated from the wrong school. He's one of the people who has convinced me that George Bush is no conservative.

Take it for what it is worth.

Drug Imports
 

Driving reasons for lower prices overseas:

(1) centralized purchasing: in most foreign countries there are one to a handful of centralized purchasers, each of whom has significant bargaining power. In a number of cases, information on the outcome of pricing negotiations is published, making the market more efficient.

(2) regulation: there are foreign countries where regulators simply won't permit a drug to be priced very high, and you get a choice of going into the jurisdiction with a low price or not going in at all. In Canada, for example, the price of drugs that are still under patent is heavily regulated.

(3) culture: here, there is often a premium for the latest thing. In other countries, premium pricing more often goes to proven drugs with a high clinical efficacy. Note that the US often prices generics below what those in other countries will pay.

(4) costs: US liability costs are usually higher, as are US marketing costs (we can talk about how pharmas market drugs another time), and often a lot of the distribution costs as well.

(5) demand: drugs get priced like airplane seats - you charge what you can for them, even if people sitting next to each other end up paying radically different prices. Countries that are less well-off tend to pay less. Since the biggest costs relating to pharmaceuticals are R&D and marketing, it's pretty easy to offer different prices in different markets as long as you have a market like the US where you can price them high enough to pay the R&D nut.


Bottom line: if we do find some ways to reduce pricing here, we'll probably drive prices up elsewhere since then other countries will have to help cover the R&D nut. Right now, I'm told pharmas often budget drug development based almost exclusively on the US market and their ability to recover the R&D from our market.

Intellectually Honest
 

A. I completely agree that Bush fails as a conservative, and that on many fronts;

B. I sorta agree with your friend, which is one of the reasons I would be willing to take my conservative lumps and vote for Dean if he were running. I think he would have stayed true to a cause which, while harmful to me in my pocketbook, would likely lead to a peace at the expense of oppressed people everywhere. Ty, while being not_nice, pretty succintly sums up my opposition to Kerry. I simply do not believe he has the intestinal fortitude to either prosecute a war aggressively or to basically withdraw and leave the world to the dogs.

The world has changed for me, and we cannot go back to the passive responses of Carter, Reagan, Bush I or Clinton. Either we need to pull back from the world in a way that pacifies our enemies (Dean) or we need to aggressively prosecute the war competently, and without regard to whether allies who are increasingly self-absorbed each year for the past 20-50, until we win the war by palatable means and with palatable results. My military quibble with Bush is the "competently" part, but I simply cannot stomach the idea of waiting to respond to further attacks (except, in the case of North Korea, where our only realistic option is to hit back hard --e.g., perhaps nuclear-- the first time they so much as lob a shell at Seoul).

Due to mine (and numerous other people on the Right) here's economic quibbles with Bush, I'd be willing to suffer a Dean... even for the long term so long as we lowered our international profile and let the rest of the world take care of itself (I have to wonder if he'd really let it come to that). But I simply cannot stomach even a significant chance of going back to a reactive policy (and that's not a singular attack on Carter or Clinton... they and Reagan and Bush I lived under a different set of parameters pre-9/11... even though in retrospect it looks like we dropped the ball as a nation). ETA: Which is why I am choosing Bush over Kerry, and not just voting against one or the other without regard to the characteristics and attributes of the other or the one.

Hello

Intellectually Honest
 

1) They aren't
2) See 1 above

Drug Imports
 

Re: 2. Did the regulators take the position that the drugs won't be allowed at all in their jurisdictions, or just that the drugs will be provided in an extra-legal manner? This is really my fundamental question here... did someone threaten to violate patents of the U.S. pharamaceutical industry as a nation?

Re: 3. Interesting (your comment on generics). Hadn't heard that before.

Re: Bottom line. Exactly. I'm told the same thing, and it offends me to no end that the risk/reward tends to overwhelmingly favor Amermican risk-taking companies, but at the expense of American consumers. Some of these countries have per-capita incomes almost equal to ours. It sounds entirely like a free-rider/strong-arm theft problem.

Hello

Intellectually Honest
 

Anyone with an ability to be fair recognizes that Kerry won't go against what the CIA/FBI/military advises and thus day to day he'll be close to Bush. But only an idiot can claim that Kerry would not bend to pressure from Europe or the voters if he had to make an unpopular decision.

iran completes its program. Israel wants to blow up the building. Phone call to the Prez to tell him. Who do you want answering the phone?

That's why anyone who listens to frenchy going on about what a stud he is, is as dumb as these women who continue to get into passenger vehicles with kennedy men.

Intellectually Honest
 

edkochsezwhha?

Intellectually Honest
 

Props, brother. Homage to Patagonia?

He(er, Catalina?)llo

Intellectually Honest
 

So that's the problem! No speakee Chicagoscrivenese?

Intellectually Honest
 

point of clarification.
I edited my post that this quotes due to seeing GGG had addressed the issue, and in his way made clear that he thinks the guy Ty quoted is an idiot, and implicedly that GGG believes Ty is an idiot. I was responding to a Taxwonk-like misuse of Orwellian.

Intellectually Honest
 

This conceit that a Democrat is going to make the country's interests take a back seat to what Europeans want is another fairy tale. The dispute is about whether our long-term interests are better served when we work with allies, giving up something in the short term to get something in the long term. Even Bush is willing to do this -- witness his decision to go back to the UN just before invading Iraq, which he did largely to protect Tony Blair from domestic opposition.