This Is The Salt Of The Earth Speaking …

There’s an unseasonable cold spell in North Dakota. Temperatures have dipped to 30 degrees some mornings. That can only mean one thing: global warming is a crock of shit. Here’s a salt of the earth, Midwestern Republican farmer commenting:

With a summer like this, you can’t tell my Dad there’s global warming.

“I think Al Gore and his group should be out here and tell us about this global warming stuff. I think he might have a change of mind. We’ve had a cool July,” says Orlan Dreyer, Willow City Farmer.

Well, listen up, Elmer. You know how people like Rush Limbaugh always say not to pay attention to dips in the stock market because, long term, it always trends upward? This is the same principle. Cold weather isn’t going away. It’s just that the average temperature of the earth is gradually rising, like Rush Limbaugh’s portfolio, okay? This overall rise in average temperatures is potentially very, very bad news for people who have to live, work, and eat on planet Earth, like wheat farmers. Got it?

Incidentally, you say you’re Norwegian. Do you have a valid birth certificate?

The Bottom Of The Pyramid

If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. So if you’re going to be a pusher, you may as well do it right:

Drug Firms See Poorer Nations as Sales Cure

For the first time in a half-century, sales of prescription drugs are forecast to decline this year in the U.S., historically the industry’s biggest and most profitable market. The Obama administration and Congress’s attempt to pass legislation overhauling the health-care system, including provisions that could lower the cost of medicine, could put drug makers’ U.S. businesses under further pressure.

As a result, developing countries like Venezuela have begun to look more attractive to the industry. Sales of prescription drugs in emerging markets reached $152.7 billion in 2008, up from $67.2 billion in 2003, according to IMS Health, which tracks the industry. IMS forecasts sales will climb to $265 billion by 2013.

It seems that in the prescription drug business, emerging markets are where it’s at. Even in communist/socialist/whatever-it-is-it-doesn’t-matter-because-Hugo-Chavez-is-a-bad-guy-ist Venezuela. If you’re in the pill pushing business, go south.

Our friends at Pfizer understand this, and they’ve unveiled a dynamic new sales strategy to capture the ultimate in emerging markets. They’ve not only gone geographically south, they’re going socio-economically south as well. You could say they’ve hit bottom:

Until recently, drug companies doing business in emerging economies have catered mostly to the wealthy and middle class. Now, Pfizer is turning to what it calls, in internal marketing discussions, the “bottom of the pyramid.” Its program in Venezuela is an exercise in how to reduce prices enough to attract poorer customers while still turning a profit.

“There’s an economy in the barrios,” says Rafael Mendoza, the man Pfizer has put in charge of the strategy in Venezuela, as he gestures toward the satellite dishes and air conditioners that dot Petare [a Caracas slum].

Selling drugs in American ghettos has always been profitable, so why not branch out and go global? There’s a lot of sick people at the bottom of the pyramid. If they’ve got cash to spend on satellite dishes and air conditioners, surely they can cough up some dough for Lipitor or Zoloft, or the Little Purple Pill?

But here’s the beauty of Pfizer’s strategy: even if the poor don’t have the money for their drugs, they’ll buy them anyway. In fact, they can often be conned into spending more than they can afford. How? It turns out that folks on the bottom of the pyramid are highly amenable to persuasion. Pfizer’s man in Caracas explains:

He says patients in Petare will follow orders even if it means spending more. “If their doctor tells them — their doctor from birth, the doctor they have had all their life — ‘Look, this is what is going to cure you, this is what will guarantee your health,’ that’s what the patient buys.”

They’ll buy Pfizer products if their doctors tell them to. So how does Pfizer get the doctors to do that? Easy. Pfizer buys the doctors.

Pfizer also woos doctors by giving them computers and Internet access for use at their offices. In the U.S., the practice of drug maker “giveaways,” even of items as small as pens and coffee cups with logos, has drawn fire for influencing doctors’ prescribing, and the industry has voluntarily done away with most freebies.

In Venezuela and much of the developing world where doctors don’t earn as much, the practice is more common, and it sometimes can benefit patients. At one of the clinics Mr. Rodriguez visited recently, for example, Carlos Serrano beamed about the computer and free Internet access Pfizer has given him. Dr. Serrano, who has practiced medicine in Petare for 30 years, uses the computer and a Pfizer “telemedicine” Web page to help diagnose patients online by communicating in real time with doctors in downtown Caracas.

Pfizer says the computers start out as loans and become permanent gifts once the doctors have shown that they are using them for medical purposes and have signed a waiver stating they understand they’re not intended to influence their prescribing.

If free computers and Internet access aren’t enough, Pfizer will sweeten the deal even more:

In the coming weeks, Pfizer plans to refurbish the crumbling exterior of Dr. Serrano’s office and paint it with the logo of its program in Petare, called “Healthier Community,” which combines “Pfizer blue” and Chávez red.

Viola! The world really is that simple, wherever you are on the pyramid.

What an ingenious strategy. Bribe doctors, exploit the poor, make a tidy profit and give Chavez a kick in the nuts. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Except that it does. With the profits they make in socialist Venezuela, Pfizer can mount a sophisticated propaganda campaign here in the US, warning Americans how bad socialized medicine is for business. It even has its own built-in talking point: Venezuela’s national health system can’t provide prescription drugs to the poor. The commies have to go shopping in the free market for that. Do we really want to go down that road, America?

It’s a perfect, profitable, self-perpetuating, holistic marvel of synergy. It’s brilliant. That’s why it works, and that’s why those of us at the bottom of the pyramid stay screwed.

Apt Pupils

I got a little tingle in my belly this morning when I came across this:

At Least 14 Killed as Swat Valley Confict Continues

The Pakistani military offensive into the Swat Valley continued apace today, and the military reported at least 14 more militants were killed. The government has announced that a few thousand families have finally been allowed to return to the districts along the outskirts of the valley, though so far it is just a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of civilians displaced since the attack began in mid-April.

There’s no better way to start the day than reading about 14 fresh kills. It’s heartening that our allies in Pakistan aren’t going all wobbly on us, but are taking the fight to the enemy.

But what was even more thrilling was this kind of language coming from Pakistani officials:

The chief minister of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) Ameer Haidar Khan Hoti declared that the war is “about to end,” a sentiment which the Pakistani government has been echoing since the Defense Minister said the war would be over in “two to three days” in May.

But the war endures, and every proclamation that it is “almost over” seems to be followed by another bombing, another offensive, more delays for the civilians waiting in the squalid refugee camps. Some of the Swatis tried to return home over a month ago, the military prevented them and ordered them back to the camps.

Most of the attention both internationally and internally is on the new offensive in South Waziristan. Yet while analysts watch and wonder if the military can handle the massive struggle there, few have noticed that despite all their predictions, they have been unable to return the Swat Valley to anything close to normalcy.

“About to end,”“two to three days” and “almost over”. Did these guys intern at the State Department or the Pentagon? I kept waiting to read one of them say they’ve crossed a milestone.

I wonder how long before they start telling the locals it’s going to be a long, hard slog.

Happy National Sovereignty Day, Everyone!

(Image by Banksey .)

More Sludge From Drudge

I have a confession to make. I read the Drudge Report almost every day. It’s one of my many bad habits, like smoking, drinking, or succumbing too easily to hatred (I also used to read a lot of Ayn Rand, but once that second testicle dropped I got over it). I never get tired of the sleazy and misleading way he phrases his headlines. It really is entertaining. For example, if Obama makes a statement about capping executive bonuses, it comes out of the Drudge machine something like this: Obama Wants To Control Wages Throughout Private Sector! And, of course, any freak cold spell or snow storm is snidely presented as ‘evidence’ against global warming.

It’s amusing in the same lurid way that crappy reality shows are, like Ice Road Truckers or Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. Or, my favorite, Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern, in which a chubby, bald metrosexual in loud pastels travels the world eating disgusting things like slugs, meal worms, or bull balls (the latter seems to be a particular favorite of his, and he invariably pronounces them to be either ‘gamey’ or ‘elegant.’)

Today Matt Drudge unearthed a shocker via Politico:

In what appeared to be a coordinated exchange, President Obama called on the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney near the start of his press conference and requested a question directly about Iran.…

Reporters typically don’t coordinate their questions for the president before press conferences, so it seemed odd that Obama might have an idea what the question would be. Also, it was a departure from White House protocol by calling on The Huffington Post second, in between the AP and Reuters.

CBS Radio's Mark Knoller, a veteran White House correspondent, said over Twitter it was “very unusual that Obama called on Huffington Post second, appearing to know the issue the reporter would ask about.”

Who ever heard of a staged press conference before? It’ s an outrage. This goes against every American political tradition. And don’t think The People haven’t noticed. Here’s a sampling of the comments:

Wow..Obama staging a question at a news conference...Say it ain’t so! Everything this buffoon does is staged and choreographed. He dances around things better than Fred Astair.

Of course the whole thing was staged, just like Obama’s town meetings, completely with fake questions and pre-scripted answers. He learned this scam from Bill Clinton. The only way Obama looks good answering questions is when the answers have been cleverly devised by someone else and memorized beforehand.

Wouldn’t you know it, the whole nefarious process can be traced back to Bill Clinton, that wicked serpent who got us all kicked out of Eden.

But wait a second. If memory serves, I seem to recall this exchange not so many years ago:

W: The risk of doing nothing, the risk of hoping that Saddam Hussein changes his mind and becomes a gentle soul, the risk that somehow — that inaction will make the world safer, is a risk I'm not willing to take for the American people.

We'll be there in a minute. King, John King. This is a scripted — (laughter.)

Q Thank you, Mr. President. How would — sir, how would you answer your critics who say that they think this is somehow personal?

Here’s how that press conference was described by one of Bush’s own propaganda ministers:

In the Washington Post, White House Communications director, Dan Bartlett, revealed that the White House knew of the questions in advance:

“[T]his White House uses news conferences more sparingly than other types of presidential events, because if you have a message you’re trying to deliver, a news conference can go in a different direction.”

“In this case, we know what the questions are going to be, and those are the ones we want to answer,” Bartlett said. “We think the public will see the thought and care and attention he’s given to a lot of the different questions that are being asked about the diplomatic side and the military side and the potential post-Iraq issue. These are all legitimate questions that he has answers for and wants to talk about.”

Whoopsie Daisy! Nice try, Drudge. Just keep throwing shit against the wall.

Cash For Clunkers

They’re breaking out the champagne again at the War Department:

House passes $106 billion war funding bill

(AP) — War-funding legislation survived a fierce partisan battle in the House on Tuesday, a major step in providing commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan the money they would need for military operations in the coming months.

The $106 billion measure, in addition to about $80 billion for military operations, provides for an array of other spending priorities, including $7.7 billion to respond to the flu pandemic and more than $10 billion in development and security aid for Pakistan and Iraq as well as countries such as Mexico and the nation of Georgia.

The bill also extends credit to the IMF and contains a so-called “cash for clunkers” provision, “which gives people vouchers of up to $4,500 to trade in their old cars and buy new ones with higher fuel efficiency…”

So, when you trim away all the fat, it’s only $80 billion for the military. But remember, this is a supplemental spending bill, which means it’s not part of the Pentagon’s normal budget. In essence, it’s an $80 billion dollar bonus.

Does the Pentagon really deserve a bonus? Let’s take a look at its record over the past sixty years and see. Bear in mind, I’m only counting the ‘big’ wars, not all of the ‘peace-keeping’ or ‘humanitarian’ missions, or silly show biz bombings like Libya or Sudan; nor am I making any judgment about the morality or necessity of these wars. I’m just viewing them from a simple standard of win or loss. Here goes:

Korea, tie; Vietnam, loss; Panama, win; Iraq War I, win; Serbia, win; Afghanistan, loss; Iraq War II: This Time It’s Personal, They Tried To Kill My Daddy, loss.

By my reckoning, that makes the War Department 3-3-1 at the very thing that justifies their limitless funding, fighting wars. Given this record, I think all talk about supplemental spending increases is, to use the Pentagon’s own style, highly premature at this stage of operations.

And it gets even worse:

Passage of the bill, which provides funds through the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30, would bring to nearly $1 trillion the amount spent on the wars and other security matters since the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 70% of that has gone to Iraq, the Congressional Research Service said in an analysis.…

The Pentagon has said that without the bill the Army could start running out of war funds as early as July.

One trillion dollars over eight years and it’s still not enough, the Army could start running out of funds … They should move the Pentagon to Wall Street.

Cash for clunkers indeed.

Fortunately, the House debate over the bill wasn’t totally devoid of statemanship. Here’s what Dennis Kucinich had to say about it: “Another $106 billion, and all we get is a lousy war. Pretty soon that’s going to be about the only thing made in America: war.”

To which I can only say: Kucinich in 2012!

The Not-So-Great Generation

That would be us.

I had an angry rant prepared about the contrast between the Iranian people’s reaction to a fraudulent election and our own less than heroic response to one in 2000, and, it seems likely, 2004, but Chris Floyd stole my thunder:

Then again, the Iranians are in general a braver, bolder people than some other peoples we might mention, who in recent memory sat slack-jawed and supine when their franchise was stripped from them in broad daylight by powerful elites. The Iranian people have already overthrown one seemingly powerful and permanently entrenched regime in the last 30 years, and could well do so again -- or at least force the current regime to become more open and humane. In any case, the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iranians who have taken to the streets, risking -- and in some cases, losing -- life and limb to demand their rights shame the bloated, bored, distracted masses of the American empire (and its British satrapy), who have watched numbly and dumbly as their liberties have been systematically dismantled, their public treasuries looted by plutocrats and war profiteers, and their own children thrown into murderous wars of aggression and occupation.…

I would add that the “bloated, bored, distracted masses” here in America are guilty of more than simple apathy. The fact is, your average American doesn’t really give two shits about democracy, freedom, or constitutional rights, nor will he risk his ass for such. We just aren’t like that. Period. All we really want is a chance to slither our way into that rich ten-percent of the population who owns everything, and we’ll abide any injustice, fraud or humiliation as long as we think there’s a possibility we can do so. If you keep the illusion of wealth and opportunity dangling in our faces, abstract notions of liberty and justice are negotiable and we won’t rock the boat. We worship Mammon, not Madison.

Memo To Iran

Memo to Iran: Get over it. Move on. Don’t play the blame game. There’s nothing to be gained by pointing fingers. The past is the past. Go forward. Now is the time to focus on solving the problems facing the Iranian people.

Best Wishes,

The United States House of Representatives, the United States Senate, the Supreme Court, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times …

P.S. What’s the worst that could happen?

Third World America

Welcome to Third World America:

Rural Mich. counties turn failing roads to gravel

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Some Michigan counties have turned a few once-paved rural roads back to gravel to save money.

More than 20 of the state’s 83 counties have reverted deteriorating paved roads to gravel in the last few years, according to the County Road Association of Michigan. The counties are struggling with their budgets because tax revenues have declined in the lingering recession.

Montcalm County converted nearly 10 miles of primary road to gravel this spring.

The county estimates it takes about $10,000 to grind up a mile of pavement and put down gravel. It takes more than $100,000 to repave a mile of road.

Reverting to gravel has happened in a few other states but it is most typical in Michigan. At least 50 miles have been reverted in the state in the past three years.

Here in California, Schwarzenegger is proposing to close state parks, abolish welfare programs and Cal Grants (which are state funded college grants), and gut money from education and health care. In my county, summer school classes have been cancelled this year. With any luck, we’ll soon be getting gravel roads, too.

Hell, why stop at gravel? Why not just go all out and return to dirt roads?

Meanwhile, the U.S. is probably going to squander another hundred billion for the Empire’s glorious crusades in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the only controversies about it are the earmarks that some congressmen are tacking on to the bill.

The Soviet Union was a bloated, militarised empire with a crumbling infrastructure too, and look how that turned out. The only difference was that they had to keep pace with our military build-up. What’s our excuse?

Hey Fellas, Have You Heard The News?

I just saw a stunning revelation from Pravda: “Bad girls are fun in parties and sex, but boring in family life.”

This changes everything. Here I am, fast approaching middle-age, and I have to re-evaluate my entire worldview:

Millions of girls that live on planet Earth and make men’s lives better, brighter and healthier, can generally be divided into two major categories: good girls and bad girls. Of course, if a man meets one of the girls from the second of the two categories, his life will get nerve-racking, dull and sick. An evaluation criterion is quite simple. It has to do with a stranger asking a girl for favors. A good girl will say a quick and categorical “no” while a bad one will ask the man “when”. There is a set of virtues and shortcomings both types of the girls are bestowed with.

Let us talk about the bad girls first and make a list of their unquestionable virtues.

Their ability to be great fun is on top of the list. They can party all night and they can party the next day too. They laugh a lot, they are fond of flirting. Anybody can feel like a professional lady-killer when hanging out with them.

Bad girls have an optimistic attitude to life. They are full of energy. They do not indulge in self-analysis. They do not tend to fall into a period of depression. Life is a never-ending show for them.

Bad girls are hungry for sex. They enjoy sexual experimentation. They will do anything they want and maybe more than you want them to when having sex with you. Their screams of joy will make you think you are really hung like a stud.

That’s the good news, but you knew there had to be a catch. Turns out those bad girls carry some pretty heavy baggage:

First, they can not be trusted. Indeed, these vultures are serial flirters and were made to seduce anything that moves. How the hell can they be trusted?

Second, they can be dangerous if they happen to be behind the wheel. They can be as wild and reckless driving a car as they are when making love. These girls are always unpredictable, they often end up in a company of junkies or rummies.

The author’s advice? Avoid the meretricious charms of those reckless driving, junky loving, hypersexual sirens and go for the good girls instead. Choose the broccoli over of the ice cream:

So you had better court the good ones. The good ones can vary as well but this is the truth: you can experience the precious moments of inner peace and comfort only when a good girl looks after you. She will takes care of you when you fall ill, she will miss you when you are out somewhere. Sex is not the top priority for good girls so you do not have to be a super lover.

Isn’t that a relief. It gets so tiring having to please women in bed. I just want one who gives me precious inner peace, cares for me when I’m sick, sits home and pines for me when I have to run to the store for cigarettes, and won’t nag me for orgasms.

A girl like that is unlikely to cheat on you. Stop worrying even if she is exceptionally pretty. Remember how she told you to beat it on the first date when you tried to make out with her after having a few drinks. She can discourage any guy in a similar way. Good girls are mostly stick to monogamous relationships.

If only Archie had known this before he dumped Betty and married that tramp Veronica, he could have saved himself a lot of pain. Alas, wisdom always comes too late in life to be of any use.