Ivins onThe Values Ruse
Domenico Rosa
published in The Hartford Courant on 5 Nov. 2004, Page A15. If, as
Ivins writes, "millions of Americans voted for George W. under the
honest impression that he stands for moral values," it would provide
more evidence of the huge gulf between fanciful perceptions and grim
reality. This was even more evident in 1984, when Ronald Reagan, in
the early stages of Alzheimers, received 59% of the votes and carried
49 states.
DR
=============================================
http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-ivins1105.artnov05,1,6109994.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped
The Values Ruse
November 5 2004
Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin' dog? Some people think you
cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but
my friend John Henry claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to
take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around
the dog's neck. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so
bad that no other dog or person will go near that poor beast. You
leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls
off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.
The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the
American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to
sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.
And at least Democrats won't have to clean up after him until it is
real clear to everyone who made the mess.
In some circles, that will be seen as sour grapes. But in Texas, we've
been losing elections to the demagogic triad of God, gays and guns
long enough to be pretty cynical about how it works out. I'm sure
millions of Americans voted for George W. under the honest impression
that he stands for moral values - family, patriotism, faith in God.
I'm sure it's the Democrats' fault that such a silly ruse is allowed
to stand. What Bush actually does stand for is nicely summed up by a
rather common news story that got stuck on the business pages lately.
In September, Merck & Co., the huge drug manufacturer, pulled Vioxx
off the market. Vioxx was a popular pain-killing, anti-arthritis drug,
but Merck said it was putting patients' safety first. A new study from
the Federal Drug Administration showed high doses of Vioxx triple the
risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death.
From there, the story takes two directions. Sen. Charles Grassley of
Iowa revealed that the FDA had tried to silence the author of the
study, Dr. David Graham, associate director of science in the Office
of Drug Safety. Grassley said the FDA first sat on Graham's study and
that then he was "ostracized" and "subjected to veiled threats and
intimidation."
The Wall Street Journal followed the other fork, finding internal
memos from Merck showing that company officials may have been aware of
the dangers of Vioxx as long ago as 1996, including a memo apparently
instructing its sales reps to "dodge" the question when doctors asked
about the cardiac record of Vioxx.
In short, we have a toothless regulatory agency in the pocket of the
industry it is supposed to patrol. We have an administration-wide
contempt for science and plain facts. And the allegation against the
folks at Merck is that they were making such enormous profits on a
drug that killed people that when they suspected it was killing
people, they kept right on selling it. When the information that Merck
had known for a long time about Vioxx and heart attacks became public,
the company's stock fell by 9.6 percent.
That's the system George W. Bush stands for: where a corporation can
knowingly kill people for profit and, when it finally comes out,
everyone knows the penalties will be so light the company doesn't even
lose a tenth of its worth. Hey, just a little bump in the road.
We sure don't want any burdensome government regulation to control
that kind of behavior, do we? We sure don't want an FDA that listens
to its own scientists and acts promptly, do we? We sure don't want
anyone to sue these monster corporations, do we? I bet if it were
possible to compare the odds of an American getting killed by a
negligent regulatory agency and rapacious corporate behavior vs. an
American getting killed by a terrorist, it would turn out we need to
be a lot more scared of rank greed than we do of terrorists.
So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad.
Want to feel better? Eat a sour grape, then do something immediately,
now, today. Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country -
join something, send a little money to some group, call somewhere and
offer to volunteer, find a politician you like at the local level and
start helping him or her to move up.
Don't mourn, organize.
Stalin Otto
Congress
Seats: 100 - R = 55 D = 44 I = 1 Senate
435/433 - R =231 D =201 I = 1 House
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/Elections2004/congress.html
Republicans pick up 4 seats in the Senate as the Democrats lose 4
Republicans pick up at least 2 seats in the House while the Democrats
may lose all of 4
_
Bush 51 % 286 electoral
Kerry 48 % 252 electoral
Nader 0.3 % 0 electoral
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/Elections2004/president.html
_
All U.S. Counties by Political Party Dominance, Election 2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm
Lamarr Edwards
You libs are amusing, America has rejected you and your screwball
thought TIME AFTER TIME, but you keep running, and losing, time after
time. Humerous, really.
Do you light a candle to this piss poor out of step, out of date
commentator every night, or is there no room for all the candles you
have burning for Mc Govern ? LE
Louis
> The following column by Texas syndicated writer Molly Ivins was
> published in The Hartford Courant on 5 Nov. 2004, Page A15. If, as
> Ivins writes, "millions of Americans voted for George W. under the
> honest impression that he stands for moral values," it would provide
> more evidence of the huge gulf between fanciful perceptions and grim
> reality. This was even more evident in 1984, when Ronald Reagan, in
> the early stages of Alzheimers, received 59% of the votes and carried
> 49 states.
>
> DR
> =============================================
I actually went to college in Austin, Ms Ivins hometown. Austin is
sometimes referred to as "Moscow on the Brazos River". Austin is
beautiful and a great city. But it's university attracts the less
than mainstream. 50 year old hippies w/ beer bellies. Hare Krishnas
(white boy converts) playing their awful version of Indian classical
music. Moonies (Korean cult). Church of Scientology who have an
office on Guadeloupe Blvd, the main drag. I remember every morning
for a month, there was a deranged looking guy kneeling at the corner
of my apartment building -- apparently praying to who knows what.
Many students, being young, were I think pretty vulnerable to these
cults. Whenever I think of UT Austin, I'm reminded of the Unibomber.
He was a math professor at Berkely. He also lived in a ditch in south
Texas for a few months before moving to the Northwest and started
mailing letter bombs to his enemies.
Lamarr Edwards
and the town has sgnificant Berkely overtones ! LE
Stalin Otto
to Bergstrom AFB right before it closed; great: Clinton blowing a
saxophone full of marijuana with smoke coming out his ears with the
inscription, "I Don't Inhale!" Use that ol' rag now to wash my pickup
with--got it on Sixth Street where all the jazz and blues night clubs
are. A good time, that...
J Dubya
> DR...@teikyopost.edu (Domenico Rosa) wrote in message news:<915472c2.04110...@posting.google.com>...
>
> >The following column by Texas syndicated writer Molly Ivins
>
> I actually went to college in Austin, [...]
And what, pray tell, does that have to do with
Ms. Ivins's article?
Bush is spreading our legs for corporate rape,
and you're rambling about flakes in Austin?
-J Dubya
Stalin Otto
>>puked pinko:
>>>>Molly Ivins
>>>Austin
>what, pray tell, does that have to do with
If you'd bothered to have finished reading his post, you'd know,
fuckwit.
Here, suck on this, you sour grapes bitch:
The Decline of the 21st Century Democrat Party
http://www.dflorig.com/2002midterm.htm
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2003/recall/
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/Elections2004/congress.html
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/Elections2004/president.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm
Domenico Rosa
What on earth do your comments have to do with The Values Ruse that
Ivins discussed in her column? DR
Scotius
wrote:
>The following column by Texas syndicated writer Molly Ivins was
>published in The Hartford Courant on 5 Nov. 2004, Page A15. If, as
>Ivins writes, "millions of Americans voted for George W. under the
>honest impression that he stands for moral values," it would provide
>more evidence of the huge gulf between fanciful perceptions and grim
>reality. This was even more evident in 1984, when Ronald Reagan, in
>the early stages of Alzheimers, received 59% of the votes and carried
>49 states.
>
>DR
>=============================================
>
>http://www.ctnow.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-ivins1105.artnov05,1,6109994.story?coll=hc-headlines-oped
>
>The Values Ruse
>
>November 5 2004
>
>Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin' dog? Some people think you
>cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but
>my friend John Henry claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to
>take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around
>the dog's neck. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so
>bad that no other dog or person will go near that poor beast. You
>leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls
>off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.
>
>The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the
>American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to
>sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.
Not as long as the Dems are still telling people what to
believe, and doing all the other things that lost them this last
election.
>
>And at least Democrats won't have to clean up after him until it is
>real clear to everyone who made the mess.
>
>In some circles, that will be seen as sour grapes. But in Texas, we've
>been losing elections to the demagogic triad of God, gays and guns
>long enough to be pretty cynical about how it works out. I'm sure
>millions of Americans voted for George W. under the honest impression
>that he stands for moral values - family, patriotism, faith in God.
>I'm sure it's the Democrats' fault that such a silly ruse is allowed
>to stand. What Bush actually does stand for is nicely summed up by a
>rather common news story that got stuck on the business pages lately.
Bush talked the talk, but he doesn't appear to walk the walk.
I don't think Americans voted for him because they liked him, I think
they just disliked Kerry in the extreme. It was not "the most
important election in US history", but rather the election with the
worst possible choices from both parties, as far as I was concerned.
Maybe it's a good thing I'm a Canadian.
>
>In September, Merck & Co., the huge drug manufacturer, pulled Vioxx
>off the market. Vioxx was a popular pain-killing, anti-arthritis drug,
>but Merck said it was putting patients' safety first. A new study from
>the Federal Drug Administration showed high doses of Vioxx triple the
>risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death.
>
>From there, the story takes two directions. Sen. Charles Grassley of
>Iowa revealed that the FDA had tried to silence the author of the
>study, Dr. David Graham, associate director of science in the Office
>of Drug Safety. Grassley said the FDA first sat on Graham's study and
>that then he was "ostracized" and "subjected to veiled threats and
>intimidation."
>
>The Wall Street Journal followed the other fork, finding internal
>memos from Merck showing that company officials may have been aware of
>the dangers of Vioxx as long ago as 1996, including a memo apparently
>instructing its sales reps to "dodge" the question when doctors asked
>about the cardiac record of Vioxx.
>
>In short, we have a toothless regulatory agency in the pocket of the
>industry it is supposed to patrol.
Nothing new there. Of course, if cover ups of the reasons
behind deaths bother you, then why didn't you complain about the
Clintons having Vince Foster killed and the subsequent cover up of
that whole thing? I hate to make that argument, and I do believe that
moral relativism is deadly, but I'm not using that to defend Bush. I
don't like a lot of his policies. I don't think the war on terror is
being fought correctly, I do believe that the US can't have a war
unless it profits Lockheed and others (also wrong), and I don't like
Bush's environmental policies.
I also don't like that he pretends to be the guy that
Americans should vote for if they want to see a return to family
values, etc. Who the fuck does he think he is? If you think the school
your child attends is pushing non-family values, take your kid out and
encourage other parents to do the same. Trouble always results when
one politician uses the nuttiness of others in this regard to get
himself elected. Sure, the Dems are loonies who support every idea
their gay constituents put forward, but the public doesn't need George
Bush to defend them from it. All they have to do is not tolerate it
themselves. If you think you need to vote for someone to stand up for
what you believe in, you've already lost.
>We have an administration-wide
>contempt for science and plain facts.
The Dems had contempt for the science that didn't fit what
they liked, and ditto for the Repubs; Two sides of the same coin, not
different currencies.
>And the allegation against the
>folks at Merck is that they were making such enormous profits on a
>drug that killed people that when they suspected it was killing
>people, they kept right on selling it. When the information that Merck
>had known for a long time about Vioxx and heart attacks became public,
>the company's stock fell by 9.6 percent.
>
>That's the system George W. Bush stands for: where a corporation can
>knowingly kill people for profit and, when it finally comes out,
>everyone knows the penalties will be so light the company doesn't even
>lose a tenth of its worth. Hey, just a little bump in the road.
>
>We sure don't want any burdensome government regulation to control
>that kind of behavior, do we? We sure don't want an FDA that listens
>to its own scientists and acts promptly, do we?
Why do I get the feeling you're about to suggest that Bush
invaded the FDA?
>We sure don't want
>anyone to sue these monster corporations, do we? I bet if it were
>possible to compare the odds of an American getting killed by a
>negligent regulatory agency and rapacious corporate behavior vs. an
>American getting killed by a terrorist, it would turn out we need to
>be a lot more scared of rank greed than we do of terrorists.
>
>So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad.
>Want to feel better? Eat a sour grape, then do something immediately,
>now, today. Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country -
>join something, send a little money to some group, call somewhere and
>offer to volunteer, find a politician you like at the local level and
>start helping him or her to move up.
That may be possible. There sure as hell aren't many to like
at the federal level.
>
>Don't mourn, organize.