Wednesday, June 28, 2006
"Just like Mike" is so 80's, you want to be "Just like Hu" (Jintao)!
"Just like Mike" is so 80's, you want to be "Just like Hu" (Jintao)!: "
Mr. President,
The main stream medium is just pushing nationalistic pride so much today its ready to bust its buttons. Its just overflowing red white and blue everywhere today and its not even July.
Did Murdoch buy MSNBC? Today, their web site had several articles such as 'Being an American' 'Take a sample U.S. citizenship test' 'America tops patriotism poll.' If you couple these articles with the flag-burning bill before the Senate, it makes one wonder if wearing arm bands and brown shirts will be the in-thing this summer and autumn.
Meanwhile the Senate's timely proposal to make it unlawful to burn the flag and the unmerciful right-wingnut attacks on the New York Times for disclosing information most people already knew about, is indicative of the continuing assault on the Constitution.
If we pass this flag-burning bill we will join other bastions of democracies in the world such as Cuba, Saudi Arabia and China. None of the other western nations have laws which forbid flag-burning.
If you use these countries as models for our new government you should choose China, because they recently passed a law which also supports your view of the mass media and how to handle national alerts.
Just yesterday you reserected a dead program by the Partnership for Public Warning. They had disbanded in 2004 because of lack of funding until $25 million in funding suddenly showed up only 4 months 11 days away from the November elections.
Call me cynical, but the system you just proposed will replace the comical yet effective color terror alert system. It was comical because of its simplistic basis yet extremely effective at keeping Americans fearful, especially around election time.
The new system is supposed to integrate many forms of communications such as: television, radio, PDA's, Blackberries, and cellphones. So in the near future I may have to pay to receive your bullshit on my cell phone?
What are you going to do, preceed each text terrorist alert message with MOTD TM. (Message Of The Day, Trust Me)?
Like I said earlier I think China is a good model for you. You like King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud's title and power but Saudi Arabia is not a large country. China is definitley the right size country you can relate to. Not only is China one of the few countries in the world to ban flag burning, they have censured the Internet and have a pretty good lid on their news medium. You want to be just like Chairman Hu Jintao. 
Yestreday they took it one step further. They imposed some stiff fines on any news media that reports any natural disaster, oil spills, health crisis or social unrest, aka riots, without prior government approval.
Only pre-approved news about bad news stories can be communicated.
Talk about dying and going to heaven. How green are you with envy?
Jiao Guobiao, a former journalism professor at Beijing University who was barred from teaching last year after writing an essay criticizing China's censorship rules said, 'We have never had such a law before.'
The censors regularly alert senior editors which subjects are out of bounds and suggest which ones need to be handled with particular 'care.'
Under the new law it would be easy to cover up their past disasters like the SARS epidemic in 2003 that allowed the disease to spread. And, more recently, there would be no news about the disasterous chemical spill which contaminated river water which flowed toward the major city of Harbin. They can also black out the news about the numerous mining disasters.
If bird flu does break out in China someday, the government, not the news media, will decide when and what the world will hear.
Your constant criticism about the 'negative press' coverage from Iraq, Fox TV and drug-addict Limbaugh's assault on the imaginary liberal media makes a pretty strong statement about your hate for American media that dares to criticize your administration. And it show's your desire for China's prefered means of dealing with those pesky news reporters.
You were serious when you told Prime Minister Tony Blair you wanted to bomb the Aljazeera television network weren't you? 
Is it just a coincidence that the three of the major powers in the world, the United States, China and Russia want to shut out all the light which may leak through the iron curtains you all built around yourselves. Reporters from all three countries have a lot in common these days.
We might as well get used to that mushroom-feeling as we sit in the dark under piles of government-approved manure; at least we are not in there alone, there are millions of Russians and Chinese there with the rest of us.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 27, 2006 10:48:59 PM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
"
(Via My letters to Bush.)
What's a good word for a lying heartless stupid bastard?
What's a good word for a lying heartless stupid bastard?: "Mr. President,
I have looked for a word in my thesaurus to best describe the actions of your Congress and your Vice-president, but I can't.
I tried hubris, outrageous abuse, brass balls, cahones, hutzpa, guts, audacity, presumptuous, effrontery, chutzpah, arrogance but none of them seem to describe the extreme behavior presented by our government.
Take 'Mr locked and seriously loaded Cheney' for instance. News reporters have caught him lying repeatedly about what he did and didn't say about the war through the miracle of videotape. He doesn't even flinch when he lies.
This Monday speaking at the National Press Club he said, 'I don't think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we've encountered.' He added: 'We didn't anticipate . . . The devastation that 30 years of Saddam's rule had wrought, if you will, on the psychology of the Iraqi people,' said Mr. Loaded.
He couldn't help himself I guess and continued to defend his ridiculous statement of; 'The Iraq insurgency is in its 'last throes.'
The reality is that the Army War College in December 2002, warned you and Cheny three months before the U.S. invaded Iraq that, 'The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious.' Iraq had been strained by decades of misrule, wars and sanctions, they observed, noting that 'if the United States assumes control of Iraq, it will therefore assume control of a badly battered economy.' The writers of the Army report emphasized that Iraq was going to be tougher than the administration was acknowledging publicly. 'Successful occupation will not occur unless the special circumstances of this unusual country' are heeded, they warned.'
At around the same time 70 national security experts and Middle East scholars met at the National Defense University and then issued a report stating that occupying Iraq 'will be the most daunting and complex task the U.S. and the international community would have undertaken since the end of World War II.' One of the members of this group, Army Col. Paul Hughes, sent a copy of the conference report to the office of Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, but 'never heard back from him or anyone else' over there, he said.
Like I said at the beginning of this letter, what do you call Cheny, very forgetful or just an outrageous liar.
Let's call him what he is.
A bald face liar. Does he also believe as you obviously do that repeating a lie often enough will become true?
Whatever Mr. Loaded is smoking must have been shared with the Republicans in Congress. For example, today the Republican-controlled Senate refused to consider raising the minimum wage. And this is an election year!
This would have been the first increase in nearly a decade. And they shot it down during an election season!
Republicans said the minimum wage was a job killer? Outside the Washington beltway, in the real world, the present minimum wage is more aptly described as a slave wage.
The minimum wage has remained at $ 5.15 an hour since September, 1, 1997, but because of inflation over time, the purchasing power of someone who is getting the minimum wage today is equivalent to what people could buy in 1955.
Back in 1955 the non-supervisory minimum wage was $0.75 per hour. We have reduced the purchasing power of earners of minimum wage back 45 years in equivalent pay. And the corporations love it.
In 1955, one hour of work at the minimum wages (75 cents per hour) you could buy:
15 Hershey bars. (5 cents per bar) (1 oz. bars) for 15 oz of chocolate
2.58 gallons of gas (29 cents per gallon)
In 2006, one hour of work at the minmum wage (5.15 per hour) you can buy:
6.87 Hershey bars (75 cents per bar) (1.55 oz bars) for 10.65 oz of chocolate
1.76 gallons of gas ($3.00 /gallon)
Despite all the production efficiency made over the years in the manufacture in making gasoline and chocolate bars, folks at the bottom of the labor pool were still able to buy more for their time on the job 45 years ago than what they can buy today.
Is it any wonder the gap between the haves, and the have-nots have never been so large? Is it any wonder there are more millionaires and billionaires and a record number of poor people in the country?
Just today The Washington Post had an article about how House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a $2 million profit last year on the sale of land 5 1/2 miles from a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds. And that is just today's news about how Congressmen use their positions to enrich their portfolios.
Chief executive officers in the United States have never been richer. They earned 262 times the pay of an average worker in 2005, the second-highest level in the 40 years for which there is data, a nonprofit think-tank said on Wednesday.
Another irony is that even the minimum wage so low, immigrants are still willing to accept the money, and the often-dangerous working conditions, as overzealous Republican vigilantes, and lawmakers throughout the country are punishing undocumented immigrants and the employers who hire them.
Get real junior, just how many Americans do you really believe are going to step down and work under the same conditions for today's minimum pay?
So what definition would apply for the Republicans in Congress who refused to raise the minimum wage, arrogance, or just heartless bastards?
Do you remember the uproar over the high price of gasoline? I thought you said we needed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and we needed to have more efficient cars.
I don't hear much about it anymore, and neither has Congress because the tax credit of up to $3,150 credit, people received for buying Prius hybrids and Honda hybrids have run out. So anyone who buys a Prius hybrid and thinks they will receive a $3150 tax credit, should think again.
We don't need to provide incentives to reduce gas consumption.
In their vast wisdom Congress decided to put a cap on the number of hybrids by manufacturers that are eligible to receive the full tax credit.
Only the first 60,000 hybrids per auto manufacturer can qualify for the full tax credit. Hybrids purchased after Oct 1, 2006 will only receive half the tax credit.
Japanese car manufacturers have already hit the 60,000 hybrid sales mark. American hybrids have a long way to go before they will hit it with inefficient hybrids like the Silverado which gets 16 miles per gallon.
What do call this Congressional stunt; hutzpa or overwhelming stupidity?
How much more abuse can you lay on the American people before they say 'ENOUGH.'
Do you realize that in the retail business only a small fraction of Americans actually complains about bad customer service while the majority of people keep silent and just refuse to do business with the store?
That same principle holds true for all sorts of quality issues, like the quality of materials, and quality of relationships, and the quality of government.
You may not have been impressed by the thousands of people who actively protested your war, and our government policies but be assured you are only hearing from a small percentage of Americans that feel the same way.
Just how far do you think you can go before you hit the often-mentioned 'tipping point?' Are you betting people can be consistently being mistreated like some men abuse their women?
Just remember, some abused women just take it, some women run away, but some women get even.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 22, 2006 1:27:20 AM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
"
(Via My letters to Bush.)
Monday, June 26, 2006
Happy President's Day Weekend junior
Happy President's Day Weekend junior: "Mr. President,
Are you having a party with cake? Will you have games like pin the tail on the Democrats, What's the matter can't you work within a budget? You know a billion here a billion can soon add up to serious money. The original estimate for the war was $50 to $60 billion and it is now up to $400 billion and that's not the end yet. You know if a man finds himself in a hole he should stop digging. That is unless you figger on someone else, in say three years, will have to take the responsibility to fill the hole.
Size matters right junior. Psychiatrists say that people who have to show off their big cars have 'severely shriveled' and inadequate opinions of themselves. Now that China is growing by leaps and bounds I guess it was time to show off your stuff. I can only imagine what psychiatrists are saying about your mental/physical state when you feel you have to show off your big shiny carriers? Haven't you ever heard that you shouldn't dig up more snakes than you can kill junior?
Congratulations on squashing the NSA warrant-less wiretap investigation. And getting Gonzalez to oversee the Amramoff investigation is as masterful and as his timely involvement of classifying Cheney's e-mails regarding Valerie Plame as top secret.
Isn't it lots of fun when you got the boys and the toys. Ain't nobody going to get anywhere when your man Gonzo is in the middle of it.
Isn't it ironic that Saddam Heussein warned the United States and Britain that he heard terrorists were planning to attack America in the 90's. He said it would NOT be by Iraq but religious extremists who were talking about it and thought the United States should know about it. That will show those Mid East countries to warn us.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: February 17, 2006 1:36:54 PM CST
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write."
(Via Mr. President RSS Feed.)
Dick shooting his lawyer friend is tragic but so funny. Just wait.
Dick shooting his lawyer friend is tragic but so funny. Just wait.: "Mr. President,
This whole thing with Dick shooting his lawyer friend on the same day both Republicans and Democrats are asking for an investigation into his role in outing Valerie Plame is just too funny.
I will spare you the obvious puns like Dick not killing him because he prefers torture. I could go on and on but lets leave it to Letterman and Leno.
Junior, have you ever counted the number of times the headlines start with the words 'Bush defends'?
Here are just a few examples of Goggle 414,000 listings although many of them are repeats; here are many of the low lights.
Bush defends Medicare drug plan
Bush defends NSA wiretaps
Bush Defends Abramoff Photos
Bush Defends Iraq Policy
Bush defends goals to slash Mid East oil
Bush defends his goal of spreading Democracy
Bush defends ignoring protesters
Bush defends repeated tax cuts
Bush defends Patriot Act
Bush defends Environmental Policies
Bush defends Katrina Response
Bush defends mining records
Bush defends Guantanimo Prison
Bush defends Major spending cuts
Bush defends rejection of Kyoto Treaty
Bush defends Huge Iraq war cost
Bush defends new budget proposal
Bush defends Harriet Miers
Bush defends Iraq war hunt
Bush defends decision not to assist California with power outages
Bush defends flying away from New York after terrorist strikes
How many more arrows can you take junior before the ship sinks?
Hey nerds don't let the door hit you in the gluteus maxim-us!
I heard you are thinking about visiting The National Renewable Energy Laboratory later this month. Jeepers junior you may have to stuff the audience with sympathetic supporters with pocket protectors to sit at the desks of those 100 scientists from this division, you laid off late last year.
Does cutting $20 million and 35 percent of all the renewable energy programs ring a bell? It wouldn't hurt to ante up before you go to this photo op junior. Maybe you can hold up a battery for the cameras and smile.
It is 12:18 p.m. CST and I have not received the White House's automated response.
"
(Via Mr. President RSS Feed.)
Doesn't time fly by when all you get is bad news?
Doesn't time fly by when all you get is bad news?: "Mr. President,
There has been so much Bush/Iraq-related news since your heroic trip to Iraq's Green zone to talk to Malaki's mano-a-mano, it seems as though it happened a year ago. 
Jurors find David Safavian your former chief of staff of the General Services Administration and top federal procurement officer, was found guilty on four of five felony charges in connection with the Abramoff corruption and influence-peddling scandal. Each of these Abramoff scandal convictions is a ready-made tv spot for Democrats this November to reinforce the 'Republican's Culture of Corruption.'
The army privates that had been abducted following an attack by Iraqi insurgents near Baghdad on Friday were found. Their bodies were so brutalized, their remains had to be sent back to the states to positively identify them. Did Alberto Gonzalez repeat his take on the Geneva Convention; 'no, torture allowed?' 'How quaint.' 
Your brilliant five-year plan to constrain North Korea has a few kinks in it. Because of your ego and Cheney's neo-conservative nation building experiment in Iraq, you may get to test your ground based interceptor missiles.
Our ground-based interceptor missile systems in Alaska and California are on alert because North Korea continues to look as though they are ready to carry out a long-range missile test and have declared Tuesday it has a right to carry out long-range missile tests, despite international calls for the communist state to refrain from launching a rocket believed capable of reaching the United States.
Meanwhile three U.S. soldiers were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqi detainees as well as with threatening the life of a fellow soldier who they feared would challenge their accounts of the deaths, military officials said Monday.
Your last photo-op declaring victory didn't work out too well. It wasn't a carrier, but you should have put on some camos and a flack jacket none-the-less. Just before you went to Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki strongly condemned the Haditha murders last November by U.S. Marines. Maliki demanded the United States share files from the investigation of the Haditha killings, which he called a 'terrible crime.' Did you talk him out of his request for the investigation files when you finished looking into his soul?
Fortunately, you did go to the Green zone and came back to provide us with some comic relief.
If you hadn't snuck into Iraq, you wouldn't have held that upbeat press conference in the rose garden and make that smart-ass remark to a legally-blind- reporter for wearing his sunglasses.
The leaked memo from the U.S. Embassy gives an unflattering and unvarnished assessment of life in Baghdad. 'Terror and violence are part of everyday life, The U.S. troops have failed to get confidence of the people,' 'Even the militia harasses embassy employees.' 'It took one embassy employee 12 hours to get gas,' 'Embassy employees have to use code names because if they used their real names it would be a death sentence.'
For Americans who wonder what our government is doing about all this: your Republican-controlled congress is debating the merits of the war. One Republican congressman put their discussion in a nutshell. 'Are you with America or are you with Al Quida?' I enjoyed Jon Stewart's take on this. And I am paraphrasing, 'And next week they will argue if kittens are cute.'
Lots of chickens coming in I hope have enough places for them to all roost.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 21, 2006 1:45:39 AM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write."
(Via My letters to Bush.)
The best government money can buy.
The best government money can buy.: "Mr. President,
You could have blown be over with a feather, when General Casey announced sharp troop reductions beginning two months before the November elections. I am so surprised, oh my, no one could have seen this coming at all. The Republicans in office must be doing such a good job they should all be reelected.
The Iraqi army must be standing up so we are standing down. Hooray! We are winning the war! 
This will teach those traitorous Democrats who wanted to 'cut and run.' True Americans 'cut and walk.'
A White House spokesman said in a statement: 'The president has clearly stated he will listen to the commanders on the ground. We are constantly evaluating our posture and the growing capability of the Iraqi security forces.'
Deciphering the Bush-language is becoming easier these days. In English it translates into: 'The President has always listened to his political advisors in the White House. They are constantly checking the bad news coming out of Iraq and the poll numbers as the mid term elections come up.'
We can expect more revelations of our successful campaign against terror as November draws near. The color codes and chatter options worked quite well for the previous congressional and presidential elections; there is no reason to change strategies now.
The seven wanna-be terrorists with no plan, no money, no explosives, no maps, and no idea how to blow up a building were just captured. Though the FBI knew about them for months, the timing of their existence was carefully handled to keep them in the headlines of White House megaphones for at least a week. Details surrounding the arrest and captured documents, taped meetings, discovered documents could extend the story another week after that. 
What is next? These dumb shits actually acted on a thought to commit a crime. They deserve to be sent to jail for acting on the idea.
Let me ask you a hypothetical question. If you continue the principle, as you have been that if you have one percent chance of extending presidential power, you go for it; when does a 'thought crime' become a real crime?
If someone makes a negative comment about your presidency in a blog or on the phone and decides to buy a gun for what ever reason could they be arrested because they may me thinking of using it for an evil purpose?
If a Senator receives encouraging support to oppose one of your agenda items, would that citizen be placed on a watch list, because they may harbor some potential resentment of your administration?
Just how far down the slime barrel will you and your handlers go to keep yourselves in power?
Adherence to the constitution or American values of past presidents are obviously 'quaint' in Bush-world, so where do you draw the line? Is there a line at all?
There was no obvious line or limits for your flunkys like Safavian, Cheney, Rove, and many others in key departments.
David H. Safavian, your former chief of staff of General Services Administration and your-chief-procurement-officer-turned-lobbyist, had access to $300 billion in addition to $62 billion designated for Katrina relief. Safavian outsourced each request for government services to outside contractors. Most people would not be surprised that Haliburton's contracts rose 600 percent afterwards.
A federal jury recently found Safavian guilty of lying and obstructing justice, making him the highest-ranking government official to be convicted in the spreading scandal involving disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
'Thanks to an investigation by The Times's Eric Lipton, we know that some two-thirds of the top department executives, including Tom Ridge and his principal deputies, have cashed in on their often brief service by becoming executives, consultants, or lobbyists for companies that have received billions of dollars in government contracts. Even John Ashcroft, the first former attorney general in American history known to immediately register as a lobbyist, is selling his Homeland Security connections to interested bidders,' according to a New York Times article by Frank Rich. 
The government has become a huge enterprise for established lobbyists like Abramoff, new lobbyists like Tom Ridge, Ex-Attorney General John Ashcroft, aspiring lobbyists like Safavian and two-thirds of the top department executives.
Contracts to rebuild Iraq, provide safer equipment for our soldiers and Katrina relief were all handled by greedy well-connected bastards who took their cut off the top and didn't even provide any accounting for how the money was being spent.
The get-rich schemes in the favor-driven world of Bush-World has bankrupted any morality you may claim. Katrina victims were robbed, our soldiers were denied life-saving equipment, and Iraqi's were denied reasons for hope and reasons to support American efforts for a democratic nation.
But, these grateful and rich recipients of government contractors will surely be there to help keep the tap open for future contacts and provide significant funding to all Republican congressmen running in November.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 25, 2006 9:02:30 PM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write."
(Via My letters to Bush.)
You're big GOP donators from the Pharmaceutical industry are such a tease.
You're big GOP donators from the Pharmaceutical industry are such a tease.: "Mr. President,
I am getting buried in drug commercials on TV. I desperately need TIVO.
If I can believe what I am told, I can have four-hour erections, avoid peeing ten times a day, eliminate allergies, and get a delightful night's sleep if I take the drugs they advertise.
I might get the same results, if I were with my hot girlfriend who enjoys watching good porn, quit drinking two six packs per day, stayed inside during hay fever season and did an honest day's work occasionally, but what's the fun in that; where would the drug companies make their money?
I am sure many sick people pay a lot of attention to TV drug ads and to all the latest medical breakthroughs. The shame of it is; millions of Americans don't have insurance to pay for them.
There is always Canada and Mexico's popular drug-runs for cash-strapped Americans in desperate need I guess.
Many of the best drugs, seem to be for well-to-do Americans. More people could afford many of these miraculous drugs if generic equivalents were available except the original patent holders of the drugs and their manufacturing process, really don't want to see that happen.
Powerful drug companies are doing everything to discourage the production of generic equivalents of their drugs.
They pay other drug companies millions of dollars to abstain from making generic drugs, they lobby Congress and influence trade agreements to discourage other countries from making their own generic equivalents as well. And you did your part when you cut the FDA's office of generic drug research.
I hear how much our drug companies say they have to spend to get a new drug out, but they fail to explain how much they spend on advertising and marketing compared to the money they spend on actual research. According to University of Rochester Medical Center the 'Direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising is a $3.2 billion industry in the United States' in 2005. The amount of money spent on research pales in comparison with the billions of dollars spent on promoting existing drugs on TV. 
The Truth About the Drug Companies, Random House, 2004, written by Marcia Angell, a professor in the Harvard Medical School Department of Social Medicine and former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine explains, 'Most of the research is done by the National Institutes of Health and by large universities, along with small biotech companies.' In other words, most drug research is done by tax-supported agencies. The drug companies charge high prices to the public, reaping huge financial benefits from research paid for by that public.'
The U.S. pharmaceutical industry also fails to mention that they spend an estimated $14.5 billion annually on outsourcing the manufacturing, formulation, and packaging of drugs, according to Desmond Mascarenhas, Chief Executive of consultant Bioexpertise.
Drug commercials remind me just what big hypocrites the pharmaceutical companies really are. News about medical drug break thorough are cruel and give false hope to the sick and elderly because unless they have the money.
What is the aim of those TV ads anyway? Do they want us to demand the medication from our doctors? If we do that, it kind of defeats all the time they spent in medical school, their internship, and medical experience. If our doctor prescribes the advertised medicine to us at our request, it just makes them our drug dealer. 
Don't get me wrong I'm not anti-research; from it. There have been some miraculous discoveries about gene therapy, surgical instruments, techniques, arterial shunts, diagnostic machines, bone replacement materials, anti-rejection medications, more efficient, reliable pacemakers are just a few of the wonderful advancements made in the last decade. The war in Iraq has led to life-saving surgical techniques caused by IED explosions. New artificial limbs have improved the lives of thousands of severely wounded soldiers.
And yet to the average American, announcements of new research and medication are all a morbid tease.
The average American won't directly benefit from many of medical science breakthroughs. ... they are prohibitively expensive and the drug companies like it that way.
Yesterday, the Guardian Unlimited uncovered a plan by a major drug company to block access to a medicine that is effectively and cheaply saving thousands of people from going blind. The company wants to launch the same product in smaller dosage and charge an outrageous amount of money.
For example, Ophthalmologists from around the world, learned that by injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of patients with 'wet macular degeneration.' 'The Ophthalmologists reported remarkable success at a very low cost because one vial can be split up and used to treat dozens of patients.'
Genentech, the company that invented Avastin, learned what the Ophthalmologists had done and applied for a licensing a fragment of Avastin called Lucentis which will be packaged in tiny quantities similar to the quantities used by the Ophthalmologists and plan to charge 100 times the cost per dose.
In high school, there were a few girls who liked flirted with the boys only to have their hormones dashed after they get the girl in a car's backseat and found out she wouldn't let him make it to second or third base much less hit a home run. They called those girls 'prick teasers.'
I think millions of average and poor Americans would agree the drug companies act just like those girls; they surely fit the 'prick' part of that definition and you helped.
From: comments@whitehouse.gov
Date: June 18, 2006 3:35:14 AM CDT
To: guzmatom@mac.com
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House is
unable to respond to every message, and therefore this response
is an autoreply.
Thank you again for taking the time to write."
(Via My letters to Bush.)
