EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US officially added to WHO’s list of poliovirus outbreak countries.
Another public-health triumph!
Archive for 2022
September 14, 2022
LAUGHING WOLF: Ave Bezos. “This morning, I come not to bury Bezos and Blue Origin, nor to praise them. For that matter, I am not here to dance on the inevitable launch failure. Instead, I come here to tell them, and Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic, a simple yet profound message: You are not fucking up enough.”
Indeed. And read the whole thing.
THEIR APPEAL IS BECOMING MORE SELECTIVE: Emmy Ratings Hit Record Low, Viewership Falls 25% From Last Year. “On Monday, the Kenan Thompson-hosted 74th Emmy Awards had a 1.0 rating among adults 18-49, the lowest-ever key demo stat for the Emmys. The previous record low was set by the 2020 show, which aired on ABC, and settled for a 1.3 rating. The following year, the Emmys rebounded to a 1.9. Last night’s show drew 5.9 million total viewers compared with last year’s outing on CBS, which netted 7.9 million. That’s a new low and in stark contrast to the 2021 show, which marked a reversal in the Emmys’ steady decline in audience size. Last year’s Emmys saw a 16% gain of viewership over 2020’s historic drop-off of 12% with 6.37 million viewers.”
WATCHDOG TO PROBE IRS TAX CHEATERS: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) says the Treasury Inspector-General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) agreed to do another investigation of how the IRS deals with its employees who are late paying their taxes or don’t pay at all.
PASS THE JUCHE ON THE LEFTHAND SIDE: Judith Warner, the author of a book titled Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety began her February 2009 op-ed in the New York Times thusly:
The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president’s health or jealous because of the cigarette.
Flash-forward to yesterday: Smitten New Jersey Democrat who got a big whiff of Joe Biden lets her followers in on exactly what he smells like:
Why, it’s as if: Joe Biden Exposed #MeToo Movement as Total BS.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: 70% of people over 50 experience joint pain, poll shows.
I used to experience joint pain in my 20s, but now that I’m exercising regularly and well, I really don’t.
BIBLE BELT STATES RANKED LOW ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM INDEX: Seven states of the Bible Belt — Georgia (39) South Carolina (38), North Carolina and Virginia (30), Arkansas and Louisiana (27) and Texas (25) — ranked in the bottom 50 of the first-ever Religious Liberty in the States Index, as reported on HillFaith.
On the other hand, four of the top 12 states that are ranked among the most protective of religious freedom are Bible Belt states, including Mississippi at first overall, Florida in fourth, Tennessee in seventh and Alabama in 12th.
Can you guess who’s at the bottom?
UNDERREPORTED STORIES: Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict Flares Up Again. “Christian Armenia has a long, unhappy history with Turkey, including genocide at the hands of Muslim Turks in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Like the Balkans, the Caucuses are an unstable cauldron of mixed ethno-religious-nationalism, with a side-order of Jihadism thrown in for good measure (the Islamic State – Caucasus Province, the successor to the Caucasus Emirate, has been relatively quit recently, but such groups seldom wither away entirely). Russia still occupies the parts of Georgia it conquered in 2008, but the blooding it’s taken in Ukraine has probably weakened its hand regionally. And coming food and energy security issues (Azerbaijan in energy rich, but Armenia is energy-poor) are likely to exacerbate tensions in the coming months.”
As partners in the post-Soviet CSTO alliance, Russia is supposed to come to Armenia’s defense — but with what?
WHY DO DEMOCRATS WANT PEOPLE TO DIE? Expensive Prescription Drugs Are a Bargain: The Inflation Reduction Act gives the government the ability to ‘negotiate’ prices. People will die.
Virtually no products are more valuable than the modern medicines produced by the biopharmaceutical industry. They cure diseases and extend lives. We’ve all heard that Americans pay higher drug prices than people in other countries. That’s true, but only when comparing retail prices of brand-name drugs. Very few Americans pay retail prices; most pay a fraction—a copay dictated by their insurance plan. Most country-to-country comparisons also leave out generics. Nine of 10 prescriptions in the U.S. are filled with generic drugs priced lower than in most other countries.
In many countries, the government is the sole purchaser of pharmaceuticals. For a new drug to be used, the government must buy and distribute it. If the government declines, the drug won’t be available. These governments negotiate with a take-it-or-leave-it attitude. Drug companies often take it, because once research and development costs are covered, some money is better than no money.
Except in rare cases, pharmaceutical companies develop drugs for the U.S. market. For drugs that make it in America, potential sales in Europe, Japan, Canada, China and elsewhere are gravy. Drugs that can’t make it in the U.S. are scuttled. Probable success in America is a necessary and sufficient condition for the development of new drugs. There are four main reasons for this:
First, the U.S. is a relatively large country. Second, the U.S. is a wealthy country; Americans are 46% richer than the British, 59% richer than the French, and 36% richer than the Germans as measured by per capita gross domestic product. Third, negotiating prices with government bureaucrats takes time, resulting in one to two years of lost sales. Fourth, prices in the U.S. are somewhat more influenced by market forces and, until the Inflation Reduction Act, weren’t determined by negotiations with the government.
Where CMS is concerned, “negotiations” is a “Godfather”-esque euphemism. If a drug company doesn’t accept the CMS price, it will be taxed up to 95% on its Medicare sales revenue for that drug. This penalty is so severe, Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks reports that his company treats the prospect of negotiations as a potential loss of patent protection for some products.
Drug research and development involves enormous fixed costs. As of 2013, the cost per new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration was $2.9 billion. Historically, these fixed costs have doubled in real terms every nine years. So in 2022, the inflation-adjusted fixed cost per approved drug is close to $7 billion.
That huge cost must be spread out over a small fraction of the world’s population during a limited period of marketing exclusivity. Without wealthy American consumers and insurers who pay retail or close to it for brand-name drugs, some drugs won’t be developed at all. While it’s true that foreign governments mostly free-ride on the enormous investments in R&D made by the U.S., it’s also true that somebody has to pay. If nobody pays, many treatments that would improve and extend people’s lives won’t exist.
Research by Columbia University economist Frank Lichtenberg suggests that 73% of the increase in life expectancy that high-income countries experienced between 2006 and 2016 was due solely to the adoption of modern drugs. He also found that the pharmaceutical expenditure per life-year saved was $13,904 across 26 high-income countries and $35,817 in the U.S. Most Americans would pay $36,000 to live an extra year.
Ideally, of course, the U.S. would encourage other nations to pay their fair share. But that “fair share” talk only ever seems aimed at Americans who already pay a lot of taxes. I also note that when the less developed countries lecture the U.S. on “climate change damages,” they never talk about offsetting things like this.
IT MUST BE THAT TIME OF DAY FOR THE STOPPED CLOCK: You Won’t Believe Who’s Giving Up on Green Energy.
JONATHAN TURLEY: This FBI-Steele-Danchenko triangle smells. Here’s why.
Related: Why FBI Agents Jumped MyPillow’s Mike Lindell at a Hardee’s Drive-Thru.
Related: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.
Remember, Biden’s own press secretary says that if you disagree with the majority, you’re an extremist!
JEFF GOLDSTEIN: John Fetterman and the decay of a redundant Senate: We have to do better, or else what’s the point?
Lookit, people: I don’t much care for Dr Oz — and I believe he should renounce his Turkish citizenship rather than maintaining it as either an exotic identity marker or a future escape hatch — but Democrats’ defense of John Fetterman is simply obscene.
First off, he’s a limousine leftist manchild with marked cognitive impairment. He has no history of legislative success (in fact, quite the opposite, as cities in PA slide into Third World gangland governance) — and no experience operating in the world outside his trust fund. He’s a pampered tax cheat who’d happily raise taxes on the rest of us to fund spendy, Quixotic Social Justice boondoggles whose only tangible results will be a line on the left’s résumé pointing to additional instances of cynically stolen virtue. As you suffer, Fetterman, in halting, garbled verbiage, will congratulate himself on being woke as fuck! and down for the struggle!
But let’s face it: This hulking, gelatinous Mama’s boy is far closer to Hugo Chavez than he ever was to Cesar Chavez. He’s AOC with Shaggy’s soul patch, a far slower metabolism, and a brain lesion the size of a banana.
If we had anything other than a totally politicized legacy media, this boutique communist’s campaign would already be as dead as the armadillo carcass buried behind his skater hood. He ruins whatever he touches while cos-playing at Working Class Hero.
Are we really okay with that? . . . Fetterman is a US Senate candidate who, in the midst of a the most profound civil breakdown we’ve seen in decades — driven by the coddling of criminals and the demonization of the law abiding as latent domestic terrorists — literally wants to free murderers. And has.
Read the whole thing.
WHEN YOU’RE A DEMOCRAT WHO’S LOST REUTERS…: Biden celebrates ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ as food, rent prices climb.
SO I’M REREADING RIC LOCKE’S TEMPORARY DUTY. It holds up very well; entertaining, vaguely reminiscent of early Heinlein. RIP, Ric.
BIDENFLATION: Inflation is slowing down for the wrong reasons: Everything besides gas is getting more expensive. “In August, most items the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures actually increased in price, but things related to oil fell, as well as used cars, whose prices fell 0.1 percent. These had been major drivers of inflation since the economy began to reopen. Where there were price increases — and sizable ones — were in things like housing and food and even utility gas.”
Oil is down because the global economy is slowing. Inflation on everything else you buy regularly continues to increase.
MORE ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC FROM THE LEFT: U.S. Senate Candidate Vows to ‘Kill and Confront’ MAGA Movement.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Anker Portable Power Station. #CommissionEarned
BOOKMARKED FOR LATER: MicroRNA found to regrow 90% of lost hair, new study finds.
TO BE FAIR, SHE’S A KNUCKLEHEAD ABOUT PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING: Congressman Calls Kamala Harris a ‘Knucklehead’ for Saying the Border Secure.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (RUSSIA EDITION): Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 13.
The Kremlin acknowledged its defeat in Kharkiv Oblast, the first time Moscow has openly recognized a defeat since the start of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
…
Kremlin sources are now working to clear Putin of any responsibility for the defeat, instead blaming the loss of almost all of occupied Kharkiv Oblast on underinformed military advisors within Putin’s circle.[4] One member of the Kremlin’s Council for Interethnic Relations, Bogdan Bezpalko, even stated that military officials who had failed to see the concentration of Ukrainian troops and equipment and disregarded Telegram channels that warned of the imminent Ukrainian counter-offensive in Kharkiv Oblast should have their heads ”lying on Putin’s desk.”[5] ISW has previously reported that the Kremlin delayed Putin‘s meeting with Russian defense officials immediately after the withdrawal of troops from around Kharkiv, increasing the appearance of a rift between the Kremlin and the Russian MoD.[6] The Kremlin’s admission of defeat in Kharkiv shows that Putin is willing and able to recognize and even accept a Russian defeat at least in some circumstances and focus on deflecting blame from himself.
If only Comrade Putin knew!