deadissue.com

Looks like Avandia may not have been a safe drug, but it was a good seller, so the market decided it was a good drug:

The diabetes drug Avandia, once the world’s top-selling diabetes medication, took two more hits Monday with one new study linking it to an increased risk of heart attacks and a separate study linking it to an increased risk of heart failure and stroke. The research comes only weeks before an upcoming federal hearing to reconsider its fate.

The drug, also known by its generic name, rosiglitazone, was approved in 1999 to help people with Type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar. At the time, it was considered a safer alternative than existing diabetes drugs used instead of insulin. Soon after approval, however, the drug was linked to an increased risk of heart failure and bone fractures; worries about the drug’s safety increased in 2007 when a meta-analysis — a pooling of previous studies — concluded that the drug increased the risk of heart attack.

I think one of the reasons the U.S has poor health outcomes, especially when you consider how much money we spend on healthcare is that the main motivation behind health care in the U.S is to make a profit. As long as we continue to believe their is a market based solution for every problem we will have more situations like this one with Avandia.

Things that make you go MMMM.

Woodward said Vick left the club Guadalajara at Town Center shopping center at least 10 minutes and perhaps as much as 20 minutes before the shooting, which occurred just after 2 a.m. The shooting victim and witnesses at first were uncooperative, according to police, but Bernstein said detectives have now interviewed several people.

Vick allegedly had an argument with his co-defendant and ten-minutes later shots are fired at the same co-defendant?

I guess this Woodard person is supposed to be Vick’s attorney, but I don’t think he is really helping his client at this point. Almost from the begginning of this latest debacle it seemed like Vick was getting bad advice, I really don’t think he should have had a birthday party and invited all of Virginia, and now we know at least one of the people that has not been looking out for Vick’s best interests.

One thing that gets ignored, was who was at Micheal Vick’s fog fights, how many NFL players attended these events. I ave always believed that part of the reason the NFL let Vick back in was to keep him quiet about that part of the his dog fighting business. This article hints at a dog fighting problem in the NFL:

“Washington Redskins players Clinton Portis and Chris Samuels defended Michael Vick on Monday by ridiculing the notion that dog fighting is considered a crime.

In an interview with WAVY-TV, Portis said that if the Atlanta Falcons quarterback is charged and convicted of being involved in a dog fighting operation, then authorities would be ‘putting him behind bars for no reason.’

‘I don’t know if he was fighting dogs or not,’ Portis said. ‘But it’s his property; it’s his dogs. If that’s what he wants to do, do it.’

Portis said dog fighting is a ‘prevalent’ part of life.”

At this point if the NFL keeps Vick around it will definitely seem to bolster the argument that Vick is being given hush money.

Doesn’t sound like the Eagles are rushing to the defense of their quarterback:

We are aware of the incident that occurred in Virginia early this morning and are in the process of gathering all of the facts. Until then, we will not have any comment on this matter.”

What is more interesting is what might have led to the incident:

Now, the Eagles might have some egg on their face ( at least it’s not cake) depending on what facts come out of the shooting incident outside a club Thursday night in Virginia during a celebration of Vick’s 30th birthday party. The shooting victim was Quanis Phillips and the shooting allegedly happened after Phillips threatened to put birthday cake in Vick’s face or vice versa.

I really hate that part of weddings where the bride and groom smash cake in eachothers faces, but I have never seen that at birthday party. At a minimum it does not sound like Vick was avoiding other convicted felons.

I really would like to go back to being an Eagles fan so hopefully the Eagles will cut Vick in the next week and fire Reid sometime during the season for inflicting Vick on long suffering Philly fans.

Both Kip, the dog and Cory, the cat seem to be escaping the heat by laying on the tile floor. I don’t have central air and if the temperature here in Denver keeps getting up near a hundred I may be joining them on the slightly cooler floor.

Looks like Micheal vick, a well known dog fighter and part-time quarterback in the NFL may be in some trouble:

A fight broke out when a crowd of people attending Michael Vick’s 30th birthday party, dubbed “Vick’s All White 30th Birthday Bash,” spilled onto the street. Several gunshots were fired and one of Vick’s co-defendants in the federal dog fighting case, Quanis Phillips, was taken to Virginia Beach General Hospital with a gunshot wound in his leg.

It is unclear whether or not Vick was present at the time of the shooting.

Vick is still on federal probation and on a three-year suspended sentence for a state dog fighting conviction. As a condition of his release, he is not allowed to associate with known felons, that would certainly include Quanis Phillips

(bolding mine)
First it doesn’t seem like Vick was taking his probation very serious, and was still hanging out with the same people he claims got him into trouble. Second, if his probation gets revoked he will probably miss another year of football; which I guess will be the end of Vick’s football career.

If the NFL doesn’t ban Vick at this point, it would be pretty obvious they don’t care at all about the conduct of NFL players.

This is Kip my Australian Shepard mix, as you can see he is taking a break from a rough day of napping.

A lot of people are calling for McChrystal to step down and he probably should after saying some pretty stupid and disrespectful thing in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, but I doubt his replacement would be any better.

The real problem with our milatary is that for quite a few years it has been mostly about promoting christian beliefs and not really about defending America. It will probably take twenty years to fix the milatary and until then we are stuck with a bunch of guys like McChrystal, who have never shown good judgement and want to make the whole world beleive in their Santa Clause. Going back to his attempts cover-up Pat Tillman’s death McChrystal has never shown good judgement but I doubt the army has anyone standing behind him who is any better. It is time to get out of Afganistan before our christian soldiers make it worse, and McChrystal is as good as anyone to lead the retreat.

Update: Looks like Obama outsmarted me at just about everyone else. Again I am really glad Obama is president

Looks like Texas is starting to have some fiscal woes. Texas like Somalia and the Sudan is becoming one more example of why conservatism doesn’t work.

Got into an argument on another site about animals in research. If anyone wants to talk about I would love to hear peoples opinions. In a related note someone told me Micheal Vick won the most hated athlete in 2010, seems like he finally got an award he desrves.

Update: Here is the article on Vick, but Al davis was the second most hated man in sport ahead of Ben Rothliesberger which sort of makes me question the entire poll. It was also interesting that no steroid using baseball players were named at all which makes me think fans don’t really care whether athletes us steroids.

This is a follow-up to yesterdays post about some in the media complaining about the president’s speech on Tuesday night:

The result was a $20 billion pot of money that will bring much-needed help to a devastated region. As one report noted, “The figure is not a cap on the potential damages, and the company received no liability waiver as part of the agreement.” BP also scrapped this year’s dividends payments, and agreed to set aside an additional $100 million to support unemployed oil industry employees.

It seems praise for the president isn’t especially common right now, but for Obama, this was no small feat — he got what he wanted, and gave up nothing. As one lawyer explained, “[The president] had no actual power to compel that aside from moral suasion and the threat of having an unhappy president. Legally, BP could have just waited for the lawsuits and drawn the whole thing out for years. As a lawyer, I find it a unique and mind-boggling accomplishment.”

Actions speak a lot louder than words, Bush was great at making big promises and not keeping them, remember “Bin Laden dead or alive” Obama seems very good at making small promises and then exceeding them. We have a health care, financial reform and now a fund to at least start re-building the gulf. What did Bush have at this point in his presidency other than a big hole in New York.

I watched a little bit of Olberman last night where, Howard Fineman, Chris Mathews and Keith Olberman pretty much hated Obama’s speech. I think they got it wrong.

Obama hit on what is probably the most important part of the debacle in the Gulf. Lack of regulation and blind trust in business got us to this point. He(the president) even talked about being misled as to the the safety on offshore drilling, and was now going to change the policy towards offshore drilling. Yeah, more specifics would have been nice but just an admission that business cannot police itself is a big step in the right direction.

I am starting to like Charley Crist and I doubt he would have been such a reasonable candidate if the Baggers hadn’t kicked him out of the ever shrinking republican party.

Looks like BP is not stepping up when it come to paying for the mess they have made:

The financial toll of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico escalated Wednesday as BP’s stock plummeted to a 14-year low and fishermen, businesses and property owners who have filed damage claims with the company angrily complained of delays, excessive paperwork and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under.
The oil company captured an ever larger-share of the crude gushing from the bottom of the sea and began bringing in more heavy equipment to help in the effort, including a production ship and a tanker from the North Sea that will allow the system to process larger quantities of oil and better withstand tropical storms.
The containment efforts played out as investors deserted BP amid fears that the company might be forced to suspend dividends, end up in bankruptcy and find itself overwhelmed by the cleanup costs, penalties, damage claims and lawsuits generated by the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

Maybe it is time to seize BP’s assets while they still have a few left

At least in the case of BP

BP stock sank to its lowest point in 14 years Wednesday as investors feared the company would be overwhelmed by the costs of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps forcing it to cut its robust dividend to pay for the disaster.

The stock dropped $5.45, or 16 percent — easily its worst day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded seven weeks ago. The company has lost half its market value, a stunning $95 billion, in that time.

On Wednesday alone, 238 million shares of BP changed hands, an extraordinary number that was more than double the company’s volume for some days earlier this month.

“It’s not time for logic. It’s not time for being rational,” Fadel Gheit, energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., said of the selling. “When people say run, you run too. It’s a mob mentality.”

BP really should be on its way to being the new Enron, nothing more than a bankrupt company that is the butt of jokes and its CEO serving a long jail term. Hopefully Obama and co will do the right thing in this case, end offshore drilling and punish those responsible for destroying the gulf coast.

Good medicine may not always be good for GDP
Especially with breast and prostate cancer it seems like there are many incentives to over treat and certainly no financial incentives to just help the patient. I would be curious to hear from the free market worshippers about this, although their excuse will probably involve something about returning to a barter economy.

I am in Nevada today home of Sue Lowden the chicken for check-ups lady and she is not favored to win at least according to the local new here in Mesquite. Maybe this is a sign that the silly tea bagger policies don’t pass anybodies smell test. Of course the real test will be in November but I don’t think the country can take too many more know nothings in politics, eight years of Bush was enough.

One thing that the debacle in the Gulf of mexico has made clear is that private industry can’t do much to fix problems, even ones of their own creation. It might be time to just admit that with large scale projects the government either needs to be in charge or perhaps partnered with a very tightly regulated public utility; but it is pretty clear after the financial meltdown and now the eviromental meltdown private industry is not able or willing to look out for both public interest and there own profit interests.

I was reading this article on the demise of the middle class and what can be done to stop it, the consenus seems to be that a better educated workforce could compete better and thus stay in the middle class. I am not really sure that is correct, as long as people keep having larger families the living conditions are ging to coninue to decline.

What do most third-world countries have in common? Too many people and no access to family planning. The middle class in the U.S is going to overpopulate itself out of existence with or without a good education.