"Sure 'nuff I got props from the kids on the Hill,

Plus my mom and my pops.

I came to get down.

I came to get down.

So get out your seats and jump around.

Jump around.

Jump up, jump up and get down."

Super Duper

(Please note the symbol chosen by www.chron.com - I find it humorous that of all the symbols available in the whole wide world, they chose the most communist one ever on their very own...you just can't make this stuff up...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/6436282.html

Note that his decision to leave his office after falling for a homosexual illegal alien makes this mayor "honest", and could only be wrong in the eyes of the narrow-minded bigots out there (nice straw man, Rick).

Note also that it is the horrible and totally unfabulous draconian marriage laws that are keeping these love-birds apart. Imagine all those horrible religious fanatics wanting to keep something as beautiful as marriage all to themselves. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to corner the market on baptism, communion, and the other holy sacraments, too. Selfish jerks. Acting like marriage is some sort of religious invention or something.

Way to go, San Angelo. You must be so proud. You've apparently been awarded the Open-Mindedness Award by the American Socialists. Congrats.

Kalifornia, Dreaming.

The test tube of American Socialism is broke. The state with the highest taxes, largest welfare state, most highly-paid teachers, cops, and firemen...

They are now having to confront the painfully obvious failure of their ideology. The hard fact is that somebody eventually has to pay for all that spending. And when you punish the people who provide the jobs, tax revenue, and industriousness, you get...well...California. When there are no more rich people, there is no more money for social programs, etc. The people who are left now are all needy - there's nobody pulling everybody else's weight.

Grandiose dreamers that they are, they had the "audacity to hope" that we, the other 49 states who have not been quite as irresponsible as they, will just use TARP funds from our paychecks to bail them out. Not so fast. The bail out has been rejected by Californians themselves, and now by Americans at large. I guess "the big one" has finally happened in my lifetime.

I mean, really. Asking the other States to bail out their irresponsibility in the middle of an economic crisis so they can continue to provide the most wide-ranging welfare in the Western world? Gall doesn't even begin to cover it.

There is a valuable lesson in this for all of us. The Libdiots want us to turn our entire nation into one big, happy Kalifornia. One problem: Kalifornia failed. They had more rich people (and therefore a better chance of making it work) than anybody else, and even they couldn't make it happen. Now, why on Earth would we want to be like them???

I say wall the cancer off and let it die a natural death before it infects the rest of us.

Open Letter to My New Pals at Healthcare-NOW

Dear Socialist Rabble-Rousers:

I am a doctor. I didn't get here by accident. I worked hard. I missed out on all of your marijuana-fueled good times because I was serving in the Marines, then going to college and studying. Why? Because I was trying to better myself, and make a good living. Yes, I said it. Make a living.

Now you have claimed me as a servant to your invented "right" to health care. You believe that the way to lower costs for yourself is to "negotiate" (dictate) what my time is worth by fiat. You deny me the right to ply my trade - a skill I have devoted my life to.

I challenge you to defend this notion of yours about what constitutes a "right". It appears that a "right" is simply something you want and have the numbers to take by force. This makes you no better than an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob of thieves. Want to really make a difference? Want to lower the costs of health care for those who are most affected by its high price? Try educating young women about the poverty that results from teenage pregnancy, instead of encouraging it through funding it with my money. Or how about working to stop expensive smoking habits among many of the very same people who complain that they can't afford their medicines?

You see, if you were truly a friend of the less-fortunate in our society, you would work for a better life for them, instead of simply paying for their irresponsibility with stolen money. You fancy yourselves as modern-day Robin Hoods. You forget that the original Robin Hood returned money to its rightful owners after it had been stolen by a more powerful person. You see, you should be fighting for me and all the other hard-working, self-improving, productive people who stand to (a) lose the good health care we've fought to provide for ourselves and our families, and (b) be taxed into poverty ourselves in order to fund your ever-increasing list of invented "rights".

Finally, I will be interested to see what you say to the hapless victims of your mistake when they all discover that your plan can only be viable for a short time, and that only when drastic cuts are made in services. This has been the case with every single socialized ("single-payer") health care plan in the world. When people are dying at your hands, rather than at the hands of private insurance companies, will you accept the blame you are now so ready to dole out? It'll be interesting to see how you will explain it. Of course, you'll be on to your next mission to save the world with others' money by then. You'll be much too busy to notice, no doubt.

See you on the internet, pals.

Still Waiting to be Impressed

I've heard it literally dozens of times, from friends of the President and foes alike:

"What do you think of President Obama?"

"Well, he is clearly a highly intelligent man..."

Really? Forgive me if I'm not impressed. Intelligence, it seems to me, would be the ability to respond appropriately to problems, or at least to figure out ways to deliver on one's promises. So far, I've seen neither from this "highly intelligent" man. It suggests that he is either not at all intelligent, or that he is intentionally underperforming in order to achieve some other objective of which we are not aware.

Just a few examples of what I mean...:

1. The country is plunged into economic chaos, resulting in a weakening of the dollar. His response? To increase spending to the point that it is unsustainable by our own efforts - borrowing one half of our budget from the Chinese Communists and printing more money to cover the other half. The result? A critical weakening of the U.S. Dollar, causing inflation, raises in interest rates, and massive unemployment.

His other response? To raise taxes on the productive - the only people who can produce, spend and hire our way out of this mess. Not exactly the actions of a man who bases his entire governmental power on the foundation of his intelligence. In this case, he is doing the exact opposite of what is intelligent.

2. The U.S. Auto Industry is poised on the brink of bankruptcy. His response? To pay six-figure severance packages to laid-off union employees (the cause of the problem in the first place), to give a controlling interest in the auto makers to the unions (foxes guarding the hen house), to raise emission standards to make U.S. cars even more expensive and less competitive in a global market, and to nationalize the means of production at two of the largest auto makers (a move right out of Marx's Das Kapital). Intelligent? I defy you to show me how it is.

3. The limited socialized health care we have in this country, exemplified by the VA medical system, Medicare, and Medicaid, are insolvent, infamously inefficient, and provide care that is envied by no one. His response? To build on this horrible failure by expanding government's role in health care. To shamelessly quote many of my predecessors: "Think health care is expensive now? Just wait until it's 'free'". The socialization of the last liberated health care system in the world, at a time when those who already have socialized medicine are seeking desperately for a way out of the mess they've made, is the hallmark of stupidity, hubris, and the worst sort of pandering to a demented, blindly ideological, and naive political base. But it's not the sign of any sort of intelligence.

4. Government spending is so far out of control, it boggles the mind. Obama ran on a promise to review spending "line by line" to remove wasteful expenditures. His response? After announcing a $4 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, he makes the big announcement that he's been able to cut a measly $21 billion/year through methods that are as inscrutible as the man himself. I won't bore you with the math, but this amounts to about one half of one percent of the budget. In other words, if you had a budget of $100, you would save less than one penny. Intelligent? How exactly?

I await the singing angels announcing the return of intelligence and sanity to Washington. Instead, I only hear the gentle trickling of my will to continue contributing to this failed system, as it goes down the drain, and to quote Ross Perot, the "giant sucking sound" from this liberal dream team as they drive the final stake into the heart of our country's productive class.

Generics: The Big Lie

Imagine this scenario. I am contacted by a representative from a large drug company that makes an expensive new drug. An offer is made. For every prescription for their drug I write, I will receive a monetary reward.

What would you think about me if I wrote that medicine for you? Would you wonder whether it was a decision based on what was really best for you, or it was a decision based on my own selfish interest? You would be right to wonder. I would wonder myself, were I in your position.

It would be possible, of course, that I really felt the medicine was the best one for the particular case at hand. But the appearance of impropriety would remain. That just makes sense for you to wonder.

Sadly, this is exactly the situation occurring every day, at almost every pharmacy in every town in this country. Pharmacists are paid bonuses for prescribing certain medications - generics.

The generic medication industry pays money to insurance companies and to PBMs (pharmaceutical benefit management) companies that provide medicine coverage for insurance companies. Those companies, in turn, pay cash bonuses to pharmacists who change prescriptions written by your doctor for a name brand medicine to a generic alternative. The percentage of name-brand medicines they arbitrarily "switch" to generics is recorded as the generic substitution rate (GSR). In some large pharmacies like Walgreen's and CVS, there is actually a quota that a pharmacist must reach each day in order to make their bonus.

This should give you a shudder. Are the pharmacists switching your doctor's orders out of loyalty to you? Or out of a desire to make more money personally? It is a legitimate question.

This is made more serious by the fact that generics, long touted as being "equivalent" to the name brand medications, are not at all equivalent. In keeping with the original Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984, the Congressional Act that gave birth to the modern generic industry by relaxing the rules leading to their availability to the market, a generic medication only has to be somewhere between 80% and 125% as effective as the name-brand medicine.

What does this mean for safety? Well, in some cases, it's not a huge deal. In other cases, however, it is a critical difference. For some medicines, the accuracy of the dose can have real life-and-death consequences for the unsuspecting patient. Take coumadin (Warfarin), a common anticoagulant medicine, for instance. If I prescribe 10mg of coumadin, it is because the patient needs 10mg. No more, no less. If the patient only receives 8mg (entirely possible under the Hatch-Waxman Act), the patient might develop life-threatening clots. If the patient receives 12.5mg, conversely, they might suffer over-anticoagulation and die from an internal bleed. Not exactly a minor difference, right? It doesn't get much more stark than life or death.

Now Senators Hatch and Waxman are at it again. They want to bring the most advanced new medicines - so called "biologics" - to market at a cheaper price. But because biologic agents are more difficult to copy, they have done away with the inconvenient "bioequivalent" language in the original act. They are only requiring these new generics to be "biosimilar" to the original.

I don't know about you, but I would just as soon not be given a medicine that "may be kind of like" the medicine my doctor prescribed. Maybe it's just me.

So the next time you hear someone griping about the high cost of prescriptions and rallying for cheaper generics to be made available, remember this post. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for.

The Inconvenience of the Bill of Rights

Amendment One: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

My simple question is this: does this say anything about exceptions in certain cases? More specifically, do we have a right to speak freely or not? What about speech that is inconvenient? What about speech that is treasonous? Despicable? Hateful?

What exactly constitutes "hate speech"? I am assuming that government has not developed the super-human ability to read minds - to see with perfect clarity the intention of a speaker or the true contents of his heart. And if they lack this ability, how do they presume to be able to label something as speech that is motivated out of hatred?

Further, how is it any of their business? When someone says that they oppose marriages between homosexuals, this is inconvenient, even offensive, to some homosexuals. A statement of this type might even be motivated by a sense of hatred toward homosexuals on the part of the speaker. In a similar way, calling a beauty pageant contestant a Nazi because she opposes homosexual marriage might also be offensive. A statement at a recent White House correspondents' dinner (about a wish that a popular radio show talk host with whom the speaker disagreed would die) might also be considered hateful. Unfortunately for the proponents of the belief that some speech is not protected by the First Amendment, all these statements are perfectly legitimate.

"Hate speech" isn't some special category of speech. It's just speech. It is enshrined in the Constitution. It is our right as free people to speak freely about whatever we wish, regardless of the way it makes someone feel.

There have been some who basically agree with me ideologically who have recently made statements to the effect that many of the statements by some on the Left are "hate speech". This is a grave error. What differentiates us from the Left is our belief that we are free people with certain rights, some of which have been specifically named in the Constitution. If we allow ourselves to give legitimacy to their perverse theories by fighting them with their own weapons, we fall into their trap. I oppose pork-barrel spending, even when it is done by my own Congressmen, to my benefit. It is wrong, no matter who is doing it. This belief that we should adopt a "my Senator can beat up your Senator" is only perpetuating the false philosophy of the Left, and we must stop it.

Support speech of all types. Combat stupid and hateful speech by pointing out the inherent flaws in what is said - not by squelching your opponent's right to make such statements. We are either free or we are not. It's that simple.