Dec 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Looks like the Swiss have approved the sale of ImClone's cancer drug, Erbitux.
From the WSJ:
...This is vindication for those who promoted the drug at and outside of ImClone, only to see its potential trampled in the media rush to condemn the stock sales of Martha Stewart and Sam Waksal. But any satisfaction is certainly tinged by the knowledge that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration passed up an opportunity to approve Erbitux nearly two years ago, and that tens of thousands of colorectal cancer victims have since died needlessly premature deaths.
Erbitux isn't a miracle cure for most patients. But it will improve and extend many lives. Consider this back-of-the-envelope calculation. The American Cancer Society predicts about 57,000 Americans (or 156 per day) will die from colorectal cancer this year. Studies suggest that more than 20% of them would have responded dramatically to Erbitux in combination with chemo (a greater than 50% reduction in tumor size), while for many others the disease would have at least stabilized. "Conceivably, as many as 100 people died today that wouldn't have if they had been able to obtain Erbitux," says Steve Walker of the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs...
...Commissioner Mark McClellan needs to remind his bureaucrats that every day of delay has real human costs.
Not to mention 7 years of the life of Sam Waksal.
Recommended Reading:
ImClone's Sam Waksal Should Have Read Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'
If Sam Waksal had read 'Atlas Shrugged,' he may have walked free.
The SEC's "Insider Trading" Witch Hunt Against ImClone's Sam Waksal: Scapegoat for the Sins of the FDA
Observe the injustice involved here. The FDA obstructed the launch of a product; then the SEC forced the termination of that product's primary creator. Yet it's not any regulator but the creator -- Sam Waksal -- who faces jail time for helping his family mitigate regulatory destructiveness.Dec 8, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.--Thomas Jefferson
What would Thomas Jefferson think of George W. Bush's expanding welfare state?Dec 7, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Barbara Amiel, from before Thanksgiving:
The atmosphere [at the UN's Third Committee] remained clubby and cordial as the Ambassador of Israel came to the microphone to present a resolution on behalf of Israeli children....He mentioned the deliberate bombing of discos, pizza parlours and school buses, almost exclusively used by children. When he finished, the session chairman did not ask the names of co-sponsors for the Israeli resolution. Because there were none. A discussion followed. The Syrian delegate strenuously opposed assistance of Israeli children and said the resolution was procedurally wrong. The Palestinian Authority's lady complained that the Israelis had "copied" their resolution. The situation of Palestinian children was "unique" she said--which it may well be, since most children of the world are not used as human shields for terrorist camps or encouraged to be suicide bombers so their pictures can be put up in grocery stores as "martyrs." [UK Telegraph, Nov 17, 2003]
Dec 6, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post (Noember 27, 2003) on some of the reaction to President Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad:
Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, said that "in this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Once White House officials "decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable."
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the White House correspondents who made the trip without spilling the secret. "That's just not kosher," he said. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."
James Taranto comments:
Is it any wonder Americans don't trust the press? Here we have an editor of the New York Times insisting that reporters can keep a secret, then in the very next breath, a self-styled rabbi of reportorial "excellence" denounces them for doing just that.
Rosenstiel's comments are especially idiotic. The reporters didn't lie; they just waited 2 1/2 hours until Bush had left Baghdad before reporting that he had been there. Journalists often get information that is "embargoed"--i.e., not to be released until a time of the source's choosing--and by and large they comply with such embargoes. Moreover, withholding facts "because it serves a larger truth" is precisely what reporters do when they use anonymous sources.
Rosenstiel adds that Bush's trip "was much bigger news on a slow news dayif it was unexpected. What reporters have done by going along with this is to help Bush politically." Well, it's true that the element of surprise helped make this one of the most dramatic political gestures in recent history.... But what Rosenstiel seems to be saying is that reporters had an obligation to diminish the news value of the story in order to hurt Bush politically.
Dec 6, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses, Dollars & Crosses 2
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton says: "George Bush has no vision for a future that will make America safer and stronger and smarter and richer and better and fairer."That's because, Hillary, George Bush is for the most part implementing your policies: increased government control of health care, including nationalization of the prescription drug industry; increased domestic spending; trade restrictions; internationalism based not on self-defense but on reshaping people (e.g. in Iraq and Afghanistan) who can't or won't be reshaped; appeasement of Arab terrorists at the risk of Israel (our only friend in the Middle East); waffling and uncertainty in Iraq; and limitations on free speech called campaign finance reform.Your intellectual honesty in this regard, Mrs. Clinton, is most definitely appreciated--if not a bit surprising.Recommended Reading:Dec 5, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Looks like Canadians will have to wait longer for surgery--as "by six months or more"--as the Canadian government outlaws private citizens from going to private medical doctors in Canada, and paying for their own medical care out of their own pocket, because they tired of unnecessarily waiting for "hip replacements, twisted ankles and cancerous lungs" to be treated by the public health care system. Quoting the Vancouver Sun:
...legislation allows the province to crack down ["crack down"???] on private sector health clinics that may be breaking the Canada Health Act by charging patients for medical procedures...The bill, which was rushed through the legislature this week, has sent shockwaves through B.C.'s medical community, which says medical waiting lists will increase as private clinics offering surgeries or diagnostic MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) or CT (computed tomography imaging) scans go out of business. "If the private sector is closed down, people have the option of either waiting in the public system or going south of the border to facilities there," said Dr. John Turner, president of the B.C. Medical Association.
Thanks goodness Canadians have America to turn to. But if America adopts Canada's health care system where will American's turn to? The Bahamas?
The legislation, which likely won't be implemented until early in the new year, imposes enhanced powers to audit medical facilities and fines of up to $20,000 for those found providing fee-for-service care contrary to the Canada Health Act. Dr. Brian Day, medical director of the Cambie Surgical Centre, said the legislation will increase waiting lists while forcing private sector care providers into bankruptcy. [December 04, 2003, "Patients face surgery delays as B.C. cracks down on clinics", Vancouver Sun]
[Hat Tip: S. Liesenberg]Dec 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
CNN can't stop FOX News, but Dictator Howard Dean can. From Hardball with Chris Mathews:MATTHEWS: Would you break up Fox?...Would you break it up? Rupert Murdoch has "The Weekly Standard." It has got a lot of other interests. It has got "The New York Post." Would you break it up?
DEAN: On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but...
What about the right to free speech and association?
MATTHEWS: No, seriously. As a public policy, would you bring industrial policy to bear and break up these conglomerations of power?
DEAN: I don't want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not, because, obviously [...]
Because, you would not get elected, Mr. Dean?
MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You're going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?
DEAN: What I'm going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.
"Democracy" does not mean freedom, a freedom that Dean is seeking to "regulate", i.e., extinguish. Democracy means majority rule--where Dean is the "voice" of that majority, and is so empowered to violate the rights of the minority, the minority in this case being the owners of the "big" conglomerates. In principle, there are only two fundamental political viewpoints. That is, two contradictory ends of the "political spectrum." Those two principles are freedom and slavery. So the issue is not: what number of stations are in a given local, or what portions of the political spectrum have radio stations. The fact is you could have five hundred Dictator Dean approved local radio stations and still be in a worse position then if you had only one radio station. What is essential is that if anyone desires to start a radio station--whether they are a large conglomerate or a local mom and pop operation--that they are not physically prevented by law from doing so. Freedom only requires one thing: freedom from the initiation of physical force--freedom from Howard Dean's totalitarian fist. It is only the enemies of freedom that require Howard Dean's particular kind of "rules and regulations."
Dec 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
In a disgusting op-ed titled "Why We Fight: Iraq From the Other Side" the Ted Rall summarizes the views of the Anti-American-Left, in the form of a fictional letter by a pro-Saddam terrorist--I mean "freedom fighter." His goal is to attack what good, pro-American elements there are in George Bush's foreign policy--what he does do is show how similar the Far Left's views are to those terrorists who hate America.
Quoting Ted Rall:
...Thank you for joining the Iraqi resistance forces...Our leaders include generals of President Saddam Hussein's secular government as well as fundamentalist Islamists....we must kill as many Americans as possible... As the Afghan resistance to the Soviets and the Americans' own revolution against our former colonial masters the British have proven, it will only be a matter of time before the U.S. occupation forces become demoralized.
The American revolutionaries were fighting for individual rights, Saddam's remaining thugs are fighting for...
Back to quoting Rall:
Indeed, the soldiers are themselves oppressed members of America's vast underclass. Many don't want to be here; joining America's mercenary army is the only way they can afford to attend university.
Because everyone knows the only way you can pay for college in America is by joining the army?
...Others, because they are poor and uneducated, do not understand that they are being used as pawns in Dick Cheney's cynical oil war.
So why doesn't the Left foil Cheney and open up ANWR?
...In this vein we must also take action against our own Iraqi citizens who choose to collaborate with the enemy. ... If someone you know is considering taking a job with the Americans, tell him that he is engaging in treason and encourage him to seek honest work instead. If he refuses, you must kill him...
And if that doesn't work you can always join the anti-globalization "peace" protests and throw rocks at policeman, sing Hosannas to Marx, and steal property that "rightfully" belongs to the proletariat. And after that you can complain to sympathetic CBS, NBC, and ABC reporters about how those nasty police officers hit you back with rubber bullets.
Take to heart this warning of Cuban revolutionary Ché Guevara..."The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area.... " If the Americans are right about us, and we enjoy no popular support, we deserve to be annihilated.
Prepare for your destruction.
Cartoons courtesy of the ever brilliant Cox and Forkum.Dec 4, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum: 
Recommended Reading:
- Why We're Losing the War on Terrorism President Bush, who insists that we are winning the war, has failed to confront the enemy states that sponsor acts of war against the United States.
- America's Timid War on Terrorism Despite America's military prowess, she is not winning the war. The tragedy is that we lack not weapons, nor military prowess, nor bravery; our military is the most powerful in the history of the world. The problem lies not with our armed forces, but with the ideas guiding our military campaign.
- In Defense of the Cowboy If America fully embraces American cowboy wisdom and courage, then the Islamic terrorists and the regimes that support them had better run for cover. They stand no chance in the resulting showdown.
Dec 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
From the UN's Annan announces "solidarity" with Palestinians:"[Israeli actions] have undermined efforts to curb violence and fuelled hatred and anger towards Israel. They have pushed back the day when Israel will live without fear within secure and recognised borders," [UN Secretary General Kofi Annan] said in a statement. I wish to join with those from around the world who today express the deepest solidarity with the Palestinian people in their continued suffering. They remain stateless and oppressed."
Of course he made the perfunctory qualifications about Palestinian terrorism, saying there was "no justification" for it. But this in no way mitigates that he placed primary blame on Israel, the victim. Completely evading the fact that Palestinian leadership is neck-deep in terrorism, he goes on to say:"Let us resolve not to rest until the Palestinian people finally obtain what is rightfully theirs," Annan said, "the exercise of their inalienable rights in a sovereign and independent state of Palestine."
No one has the "inalienable right" to establish a terrorist dictatorship, which is exactly what Arafat has so far established. But Annan was merely joining the chorus of anti-Israel sentiment, which was lead by Jimmy Carter: Carter slams Israel, Bush in Geneva speech."No matter what leaders Palestinians might choose, no matter how fervent American interests might be or how great the hatred and bloodshed might become, there is one basic choice for the Israelis: Do you want peace with their neighbors or do you want to retain settlements throughout the occupied territories?" [...] Carter said the main flaw of the US-brokered road map is its step-by-step approach, which he said has allowed Israel to stop its advance by building "an enormous barrier wall" and with "the colonization of Gaza."
Carter, too, had the standard, lame qualifications about Palestinian "violence," but it's clear who he thinks is to blame for it. Like Annan, Carter must evade the full context, which is that Israel occupies those territories as a matter of national self-defense against neighboring Arab nations who have repeatedly launched wars of aggression. The article quotes a senior Israeli government official government official who puts the situation in its proper perspective:
"[Carter] should take a visit to our cemeteries and see what Arafat brought upon us after being offered everything [former prime minister Ehud] Barak offered him at Camp David and Taba."
Recommend Reading:Dec 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Hillel Halkin doesn't appear to grasp that there is no such thing as a right to "national self-determination," but at least he sees the hypocrisy of those waving its banner:
[T]he response of the Madrid government to the Basque and Catalonian independence movements is curious. Self-determination for the nationalities of the earth? Of course, claro, bien sur! Just not for our nationalities. Nor, in fact, for most others. The Palestinians, it seems, deserve a state of their own; so, perhaps, do the Kosovan Albanians; so, too, did the inhabitants of East Timor. But what about the Chechens? The Tibetans? The Kurds of Turkey? The Christians of southern Sudan? What about the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Papuans of Indonesian New Guinea, the Uighurs of China, the Karens of Burma? Each of these peoples has its own culture and language... each has taken up arms in its own cause....Sheer cant, too, is the commonly spouted mantra that Israel's struggle with the Palestinians is a futile exercise in failure, since wars of "national liberation" are inherently just and can never be defeated. Wars of national liberation have often been defeated, the Tibetans' doomed uprising against the Chinese and the Kurds' hopeless battle against the Turks being cases in point. Such wars triumph when political, military, and demographic circumstances are in their favor; they lose when they are not. [Daily Sun, Nov 25, 2003]
Dec 3, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the Taipei Times:President Chen Shui-bian has detailed the arsenal of Chinese missiles targeting Taiwan in his latest move to build a case for a contentious sovereignty vote next year. Chen said late Sunday it was the first time he had specified the location of bases within 600km holding 496 ballistic missiles pointed at Taiwan. The move is likely to inflame already tense relations with Beijing. His latest comments, at an election rally, have already prompted criticism from the opposition camp, which claimed he had leaked military secrets...
..."And they often held war games threatening to attack Taiwan ... this is the ongoing threat toward Taiwan," Chen said while addressing a group of supporters. Chen said he could not work out why Taiwan had to accept an imposed political design of "one country, two systems" or face an invasion.
...Commenting on Lin Yu-fan's criticism, James Huang, a Presidential Office spokesman, said yesterday that what Chen had revealed was China's national secrets, not Taiwan's. [December 02, 2003]
Dec 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Cash isn't king in NY charter election reports the NY Sun: Bloomberg spent $7.4 million to support an amendment to the city charter; his opponents just over $500,000--yet they won overwhelmingly, 72% to 29%.Dec 2, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
FoxNews had a couple of interesting tidbits about the efforts of Hollywood leftists to bring down President Bush. Billionaires Bundle Funds for Democrats contained this:Defeating President Bush in 2004 has become a central focus in the life of billionaire George Soros, and he's ready to put his money where his mouth is. Soros has pledged $15 million of his personal wealth to activists working to undo Bush's presidency. [...] [E]lectronic pop guru Moby has teamed up with Soros' son Jonathan Soros, actress Janeane Garofalo and other pop stars for a contest urging amateur filmmakers to produce their own 30-second anti-Bush videos.
And FoxNews also reported: Robbins' 'Embedded' Play Not So Realistic.[Actor and "anti-war" activist Tim] Robbins portrays journalists as Pentagon puppets, U.S. soldiers as thieves and killers of innocent women and children, and the Bush cabinet as war mongers willing to start a war to escape the negative publicity of the Enron scandal.
FoxNews had embedded reporters in Iraq, so the news organization also sent someone to view Robbins' play. Marine Maj. Rich Doherty, who has a Ph.D. from Berkeley, fought in Iraq and worked alongside several embedded journalists, had this to say about the play:"It was spun to make it look like that leadership started this war simply for its own political agenda … and that can't be further from the truth," Doherty said. [...] "I'm giving you an opinion based on what I saw with my boots on the ground and in the sand."
Of course, it's not like the truth has ever stopped leftists in their propaganda efforts. They even deny it's propaganda. An audience member performed mental contortions in defense of the play:"It is not propaganda. It is a voice of dissent, which is different than propaganda."
Yeah, right ... and terrorists are "freedom fighters."
Recommended Reading:- Preserving America: George Soros versus Thomas Jefferson As the anniversary of our country's founding approaches, it is important to understand not only what our country stands for but what is required to protect it.
- First Amendment Bull: Tim Robbins vs. Free Speech Lately, it seems as if almost every week some leftist celebrity finds the time and energy to publicly demonstrate their gross misunderstanding of a simple two-word phrase: "free speech." This week, it is actor Tim Robbins.
- When Hollywood Went to War It only took 60 years for Hollywood to go from producing war heroes to a group of hypocrites and pacifists, none of whom would be free to make movies without America's Revolutionary War
Dec 1, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Taranto found this item in the Financial Times:
"The European Union's racism watchdog has shelved a report on anti-semitism because the study concluded Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the incidents it examined," the Financial Times reports. The senior staff and board of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia nixed the researchers' findings over objections to "their definition of anti-semitism, which included some anti-Israel acts. The focus on Muslim and pro-Palestinian perpetrators, meanwhile, was judged inflammatory."
Nov 27, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Harry Binswanger at HBList:Each year at this time I try to remind everyone that the first American Thanksgiving was NOT in Puritan, fanatical, theocratic Plymouth, but in the Corporate, for-profit colony of Jamestown.
Well, maybe not right in Jamestown--but nearby. The first Thanksgiving was at Berkeley Plantation, on the James River, about 30 miles from Jamestown (and the same distance from where I was raised, along the same river).
From the Berkeley Plantation website:
"Berkeley plantation was first settled in 1619, just twelve years after Jamestown. Thirty-eight brave men from Berkeley Parish in England, sailed to Virginia to seek their fortunes. They came ashore at Berkeley December 4, 1619, and gave thanks to God for a safe journey. Their instructions were:
"Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."
So, help counter the anti-American, pro-Kennedyland propaganda: spread the word about the first permanent English settlement, Jamestown 1607, and the first official (or non-official) Thanksgiving, in 1619. (As you know, the Pilgrims didn't even arrive on these shores until 1620).
Nov 26, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Bloomberg's Caroline Baum on the true roots of Thanksgiving, drawn from the memoirs of William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony beginning in 1621:One of the traditions the Pilgrims had brought with them from England was a practice known as 'farming in common.' Everything they produced was put into a common pool, and the harvest was rationed among them according to need. They had thought 'that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing,' Bradford recounts. They were wrong. 'For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte,' Bradford writes. Young, able-bodied men resented working for others without compensation. Incentives were lacking.
After the Pilgrims had endured near-starvation for three winters, Bradford decided to experiment when it came time to plant in the spring of 1623. He set aside a plot of land for each family, that 'they should set corne every man for his owne particular, and in that regard trust to themselves.' The results were nothing short of miraculous. Bradford writes: 'This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other ways would have been by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content...Given appropriate incentives, the Pilgrims produced and enjoyed a bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623 and set aside 'a day of thanksgiving' to thank God for their good fortune. ["Pilgrims' Progress, or the Story of Thanksgiving"]
Or more properly they should have thanked the man who came up with the idea of property rights. For the proper reasons to celebrate Thanksgiving see Dr. Gary Hull's article Thanksgiving: An American Celebration of the Creation of Wealth. [Hat Tip: Don Luskin]
Nov 26, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Words of wisdom from Thomas Sowell:The death penalty for the D.C. sniper was said to be because he "showed no remorse." When the law gives a price list for committing various crimes, why should there be a discount for acting ability?
