Colbert On Cain
Posted by Michelle Moquin on October 31st, 2011
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Good morning! And Happy Halloween!
Don’t know how I missed this a few days ago. It my not be scary (Or is it?)…but it’s at least funny.
Stephen Colbert Offers Herman Cain Suggestions For Further Commercials, Issues Challenge
That new Herman Cain spot where his chief of staff is caught during his smoke break behind the loading dock talking about how amazing it is to be a part of Cain’s campaign — a campaign that is now leading in some national polls despite the obvious impediment of not knowing precisely what it’s supposed to do now that it’s become accidentally successful — was, obviously, ripe for parody. And who better to parody the spot than Stephen Colbert, the man from whom the ad stole the phrase “I am America” for its outro backing track.
“He’s not shooting himself in the foot,” said Colbert, responding to the many critics who have panned the ad, declaring Cain to be “historically insane,” “bizarre,” and “a joke.” “He’s shooting himself in the lungs.”
Colbert generously offered Cain several different ways to make that new ad even more edgy. But he wasn’t as charitable about the campaign appropriating his slogan, especially given that Cain has twice cancelled on “The Colbert Report.” So, he offered Cain one final opportunity to receive “the Colbert bump” — and he challenged him to a “slow smile contest,” to boot.
Readers: Got to run – blog me.
Peace out.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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October 31st, 2011 at 11:02 am
Yvonne (#6 Yesterday):
Why don’t you ask Howie himself?
The aliens waiting to visit the earth were authorized to come in from the northeast. They brought a blanket of snow to cover their possible inability to maintain cloak because they had not bothered to coordinate their different power sources with Tyna. MIKONY (Missouri, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma towards upstate NY was the route authorized.)
The size of some of the ships dictated a wider swath. So other areas suffered as well. The aliens wanted to clear the airways for entry and stealth — parking over park areas and wide open spaces. They needed to check and coordinate how high each individual ship must be to avoid the ground effect feedback from hovering too close to the surface while parking in cloak.
The government suspects that the weather was caused by something other than weather patterns, but they are helpless to do anything about it.
HOWIE
October 31st, 2011 at 11:19 am
Michelle:
I received an e-mail from the Progress Florida organization. I feel it is important enough to share with you and your entire blog audience. It is cut and pasted word-for-word.
“The assault on women and their health care decisions is reaching new heights in Florida. Extreme anti-choice activists are attempting to pass a constitutional amendment in Florida that would give a fertilized egg the legal rights of a living person.
Such a radical amendment would unleash a Pandora’s Box of cruel and unnecessary consequences for many Florida families. It would outlaw all abortions, even in the horrific cases of rape and incest. It could also outlaw commonly used forms of birth control, including The Pill and emergency contraception.
Before they can win in Florida, these anti-choice extremists know they must win an election in Mississippi on Nov. 8th (Initiative 26) to make that the first state in the nation to adopt a so called “Personhood” Amendment. If we stop them in Mississippi we can surely stop them in Florida. If we don’t, then momentum shifts to them.
For more information or to RSVP for a phone bank, please contact:
info@fappa.org or call 850-559-2223.
Together, we’re going to put a stop to this extreme assault on women and families. Thank you for all you’re doing to protect women’s reproductive health care.
For progress,
Mark, Julie and the rest of the team”
HOWIE
October 31st, 2011 at 2:17 pm
GOP extremist presidential candidate Herman Cain has teamed up with the nefarious Koch brothers to turn the American Dream into a real life nightmare for middle-class families. This Friday, Nov. 4th, the Koch brothers’ front group Americans for Prosperity is hosting a gala dinner as part of a conference in Washington, D.C., that has been cynically titled “Defend the American Dream.” We won’t let the Kochs’ extremist ploy go unanswered.
Join the 99% for OCCUPY the KOCHS: GUERRILLA DRIVE-IN, a fun COUNTER-EVENT featuring edgy videos that expose the Koch brothers’ plot to buy our government in the name of the 1%.
CAN YOU BE THEE AT 7 P.M. Friday, NOVEMBER 4 at 1025 7th St. NW, in WASHINGTON, D.C.?
The Koch brothers and their cronies plan to increase income inequality, protect Wall Street banks, subsidize Big Oil and eliminate vital programs for America’s families like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Now is the time to show up and stop the greedy Koch brothers in their tracks.
The Occupy Wall Street movement continues to gain strength across the country. For more than a month, people of all ages and backgrounds have been on the streets expressing their rejection of corporate money in politics at Occupy events as well as at a variety of other struggles and actions.
The Occupy the Kochs: Guerrilla Drive-In will bring the message of the 99% straight to the door of some of our most well-funded and despicable opponents.
In Solidarity,
Health Care for America Now (hcan)
October 31st, 2011 at 5:30 pm
Why don’t witches have babies? Because warlocks have hollow-weenies!!!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
October 31st, 2011 at 6:51 pm
STAYING HEALTHY IN SPITE OF MEDICAL CARE
As a reader of Daily Health News, you already are acquainted with the unfortunate truth that medicine today has become a big business.
In the best cases, doctors are driven by the desire to do well by doing good. But sometimes, they are driven by less noble motivations, such as pure greed.
I’ve written before about this sad state of affairs — so my interest was piqued when I came across the new book Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises.
Calling themselves “disillusioned insiders,” the book’s coauthors, Richard A. Deyo, MD, MPH, and Donald L. Patrick, PhD, MSPH, warn of the “hazards of uncritically embracing medical advances.”
As you can imagine, I was eager to hear what they had to say, so I placed a call to Dr. Deyo.
A key theme of their book is that some pharmaceutical companies, some makers of medical devices and even many doctors are all too eager to manipulate vulnerable people into believing that a new product offers the latest and best hope for a frightening health problem, Dr. Deyo told me.
The problem is, there’s usually lots of hoopla surrounding the release of a promising new drug or technology, but it’s not long before we start hearing about dangerous side effects and other risks associated with the new treatment.
This happens again and again. Dr. Deyo and I went through a few examples from recent years…
Avandia (rosiglitazone).
This is a medication that was much hyped and that many doctors were prescribing for diabetes, but it was linked with an increased risk for heart attacks just eight years after the drug was introduced.
The FDA now requires Avandia’s label to carry a warning that includes the cardiovascular risk.
Vioxx (rofecoxib). This drug, no longer on the market since it was recalled by the manufacturer in 2004, was developed to treat arthritis and other causes of acute pain.
It was aggressively marketed and expensive in comparison with its competitors, but it turned out to be, in most cases, no more effective and certainly less safe than some of its competitors, Dr. Deyo noted.
Robotic prostate surgery. This is an increasingly popular technology that many American hospitals and surgeons have promoted as vastly better than traditional surgery.
But robotic prostate surgery has downsides, including a higher risk for erectile dysfunction and incontinence and a higher cost (typically $1,500 to $2,000 more than manual surgery).
Some of the complications have been ascribed to the inexperience of surgeons using the machines, a problem that now may become less widespread as doctors become more familiar with robotic techniques.
Metal-on-metal hip replacements. These were supposed to be an improvement over traditional hip replacements made of metal and plastic.
But it hasn’t turned out that way — not by a long shot.
At this year’s annual conference of the British Hip Society, researchers presented results of studies that showed that between 12% and 15% of patients who had been fitted with metal-on-metal hip joints had to undergo corrective surgery within five years.
For patients fitted with one particular brand of metal-on-metal hip made by the DePuy Orthopaedics unit of Johnson & Johnson, researchers said the rate was even worse — 21% to 35% after four years and 49% after six years!
Problems included tiny particles of the metal being worn off, a buildup of metals and fluids within the body and pain for the patients. The DePuy hips have now been recalled.
So how can a patient see through the hype? How can you know if there might be problems with a drug or medical device before the FDA takes it off the market or puts up a warning?
“It can be hard to know if the doctors or hospitals are sincerely smitten with a new product or if it’s just good marketing techniques on the part of the manufacturers — or a combination of all those factors,” Dr. Deyo said.
“Among all of us, there seems to be a tendency to assume that newer, more sophisticated technology is better, and it’s often hard to slow down and take a critical look.” But, Dr. Deyo said, patients can go a long way toward better informing themselves by taking these steps…
1. Do some research. Information from the manufacturer of a medication or a device will certainly be biased, but, says Dr. Deyo, it’s a good place to start.
Then go to the Internet — but beware. Many seemingly unbiased sites actually have ties to medical companies…
and many well-meaning providers of medical information and opinions on the Web simply don’t know what they’re talking about.
Be suspicious if you see advertisements for the treatment, drug or technology on the site that you are viewing.
Also check the “contact” or “about” pages of the site to see if there are any revealing clues there.
As a general rule, it’s best to rely on sites where information comes from readily identifiable qualified sources, such as the National Institutes of Health.
2. Find out whether your physician has a stake (personal or financial) in what he/she recommends or prescribes.
For example, if your doctor is working or consulting for the manufacturer of the medication or device that is under consideration, then he has a conflict of interest.
If you find yourself in a situation where a doctor suggests prostate removal using robotic surgery, don’t be afraid to ask if he owns a stake in the facility offering the surgery or if he has done any work for the manufacturer of the robotic equipment.
3. Get a second opinion — and even a third.
Dr. Deyo said that this is especially important to do whenever your doctor has a conflict of interest or whenever a recommended medication or procedure is expensive but not life-saving.
He suggests making a list of your questions and asking them of each doctor. He adds that one important question should be, “What would happen if I don’t have the procedure or if I take a different medication?”
Often the patient will discover that there isn’t a consensus, which is eye-opening. In some cases, this may prompt you to do even more homework.
New products offering hope can be extremely compelling — and some do live up to the hype. But using your own resources and judgment to check out the substance behind the promise should be just as compelling when it comes to your continuing good health.
Source:
Richard A. Deyo, MD, MPH, Kaiser-Permanente Endowed Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, department of family medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon.
He is also coauthor with Donald L. Patrick, PhD, MSPH, of Hope or Hype: The Obsession with Medical Advances and the High Cost of False Promises (Amacom).
October 31st, 2011 at 11:43 pm
Now that the war is winding down in Iraq the government can spend more time on catching the people who shipped large amounts of stolen money home.
They will start with the small fry, meaning those that stole 5 to 6 figure amounts of money. But if Obama gets reelected they will go after those that stole $millions and even $billions of dollars from Saddam’s loot.
November 1st, 2011 at 2:22 am
We are in 1892:
This article is apropos to what America is experiencing today. The rich having control over the money supply, the government legislative branches and the ability to manipulate if not control the media so that the people are influenced to believe that the middle and lower classes are responsible for the ills of the country.
The parallels between the people of Wyoming’s dissatisfaction and the present day’s people’s unrest with Wall Street are erie.
##########################
A “War” in Johnson County, Wyoming, may herald the end of the “Wild West.” The days of all-powerful cattlemen dominating the ranges seem to be over.
Three years ago, rich stockmen controlled the law and land throughout the territory. When a prostitute called Ella “Castle Kate” Watson sold her favours for stolen stock.
The cattlemen hanged her, and then falsely spread it to newspapers all over thee country that she was a Bandit Queen.
This year they declared that Wyoming homesteaders had formed a band of rustlers known as the “Red Sash Gang,” and they organized an army to wipe them out.
While there are undoubted rustlers and desperadoes in the mountain hide-outs, the stockmen’s first victims were two ranchers, killed in cold blood.
This aroused the country. Desperadoes and farmers united to drive off the stockmen’s army, who in the end had to be rescued by US cavalry.
It seems that the cattlemen’s real grievance is the spread of fixed ranches, with barbed wire fencing which restricts the great cattle ranges. Both cowboys and rustlers may now find their palmy days are over.
AH
November 1st, 2011 at 8:22 am
(#14 October 31) 11ok65ruk:
There are already too many Alien Visitors in this Solar System, especially around Guam. Therefore there is a need for one group to coordinate ALL Alein interventions on earth matters. Through Tyna, the TAO have taken that lead in order to prevent undesirable consequences.
If they decide “NO” is the answer to even a small tropical storm over Guam to hinder reconnaissance flights by the U.S. military, then “NO” it should be.
Remember D23//7 and the Consortium? They went missing because they were under the illusion of superiority.
All that is left of them is the memory of D23//7 and the Consortium as well as the 342,288 Aliens who were stationed on earth and the 3 million plus that were on vessels anchored just outside our solar system and the Emperor’s line of no weaponry.
Are you capable of being objective and heeding the Tao?
The consequences are not worth disobedience which can lead to anarchy among the visitors. You know That will not be tolerated.
HOWIE
November 5th, 2011 at 6:23 am
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