merry happy warm fuzzies to all

regardless of whom (or what) you worship - if, indeed, it's anything at all, and even if it's not - merry happy warm fuzzies to you and yours. the place below is where we (and possibly more) will be hangin' out for new years. we'll get back to you on whether or not it was happy.

snake oil, by any other name

allergan, the makers of botox, wants to pitch their drugs for uses for which they have not been approved. they call this 'free speech'.

(we have some pills that we'd like to sell to you, too. they make you immortal. want some?)

jesus christ! isn't it enough that big pharma owns the fda without letting them sell their wares for conditions that they haven't even been tested on? isn't it enough that so many of the drugs that do get approved for a particular condition don't work at all, work poorly, or cause worse issues than they're meant to treat?

here's another one: there appears to be little good science behind the need for a swine flu vaccine, testing has been spotty, yet if something goes wrong and you have a bad reaction to the vaccine, you can't sue the drug maker. no matter how bad it gets. because congress says so.

we shit you not.

the campaign to kill health care

it's no secret that your insurance company did everything in its power to kill the public option in the recent healthcare bill, and to water down everything else to turn it to their advantage.

here's how they did it:

putting wolves in sheeps' clothing (to wit, the so-called 'blue dog' democrats - one of whom later showed his fangs and switched parties). and by feeding false information ('death squads') to the orwellians at fox 'news' (we use this term loosely). and some active blocking by the republicans using procedural techniques that would have shamed machiavelli.

so which of our senators did they pay off in order to make sure that we don't all have healthcare, and that our healthcare costs continue to skyrocket? here are some sources to help you find out.


so congratulations, if you didn't fight to get the public option and true healthcare reform to pass, and if you were taken in by these simple parlor tricks. you've guaranteed that you will eventually no longer be able to afford healthcare, and that we will continue to have children in the united states - the most wealthy nation in the world - that have no health insurance at all.

nice job!

a swiftly tilting planet

a recent report by the national oceanographic & atmospheric administration shows that ocean temperatures continue to rise, and hit a record high in july of this year. (land temperatures also continue to rise, despite the bush administration's attempts to hide this information, and despite the fect that we're experiencing a current cold snap.)

even better news: some scientists believe that the changing ocean temperatures may be changing the tilt of the earth's axis.

what does that mean? no one knows. but we're sure there'll be some glorious fistfights about it. and that makes us happy!

nsa exceeds eavesdropping limits

no, really. and how exactly is this news?

cia torture manual

just in case you ever wanted to know the details of how the cia tortures persons of interest, they were kind enough to publish their torture manual.

no kidding!

our favorite part is the collar that is used to slam the victim's - sorry, 'detainees' - head against a wall, over and over again. if brain damage doesn't get'em to cough up strategic information, what will?

did banks tank economy on purpose?

congress is investigating whether some of the banks that sold synthetic cdo's and then bet against them by selling short may have steered their clients toward buying them. this cost insurance companies and pension funds billions of dollars and helped to precipitate the current recession.

we quote: 'one focus of the inquiry is whether the firms creating the securities purposely helped to select especially risky mortgage-linked assets that would be most likely to crater, setting their clients up to lose billions of dollars if the housing market imploded.'

translation: sold clients on investments that they knew were bad, then bet money that their clients would lose their shirts. now remind us why these fine fellows aren't hanging from a gallows somewhere. oh, that's right - they own congress.

names of the banks involved after the jump.