This has occasioned some comment:

The fact that many of them joined the Tea Party after losing their jobs raises questions of whether the movement can survive an improvement in the economy, with people trading protest signs for paychecks.

The economy is not going to recover enough to put most of these people back to work. The administration's own figures show they expect this year's job gains to be barely at the rate necessary to keep up with population increases. Indeed, it is extremely that employment will not recover before the end of this economic cycle.

This wasn't necessary. A real, properly put together stimulus bill would have got them back to work. For example, a program to make every building in America be at least energy neutral and preferably creating energy, would have kept them usefully employed.

The bottom line in America today is that while everyone who isn't paid not to know, knows how to fix what's wrong with America (for example, instead of Health Care Reform, pass single payer), nothing that really fixes anything fundamental will be allowed to occur.

America is controlled by what economists call rent-seeking behaviour. Virtually everyone important has a revenue stream, and they don't want anyone to take that revenue stream away. So pharma and insurance companies, who would have been damaged badly by single payer (they would have lost hundreds of billions) made sure that a plan to provide everyone with better health care for a third less than current costs was never even considered.

The most important game in America today is the contest for control of government, so that government can directly or indirectly give you money. Health care "reform" in which the government decided to force Americans to buy private health insurance or be fined is merely the latest (and most blatant) example. Virtually every industry, from finance to telecom to agriculture is involved in this game. It is in all their interests to make sure the game continues, but they do fight amongst each other for the spoils.

This game will continue until the US can no longer afford it. Indeed, even now, some industries are taking it on the chin, loosing out to their better connected cousins. For example, the current downturn has seen the prison-industrial complex taking losing out. They get most of their money from State governments, and the States simply cannot afford to keep locking up so many people at so much cost.

This is the downward spiral of a great power in senescence. It ends in collapse, reformation or revolution, when it becomes clear that the rents of the Ancien Regime can no longer be afforded, and too many of those who were bought off are thrown off their dole.

The Tea Partiers, however misguided they may be in many respects, have been thrown off the dole. Whatever they are called, they will not be going away.

This is an amazingly arrogant video in many senses. We're supposed to believe that former Senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent of this WMD Prevention Commission, a government-funded group, put together this snazzy and misleading video about H1N1 vaccines? Or did a Big Pharma lobbying group do it for them? It's hard to say, based on the lack of information as to the actual creator. The basic question is, is there really anything wrong with creating flu vaccine with eggs?

Here's the thing - back in the day, pharmaceuticals making vaccines needed a living medium in which to grow cultures, something that was cheap because they needed to make a lot. Something like... eggs! The FDA not only approved this process for flu vaccines, but also vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, and rabies. And the thing is, once the FDA approves a particular process and materials for a drug, if you want to update the process and/or materials, you have to start all over with the FDA approval process. That's expensive, especially if you have to pay off the research and development costs accrued.

Today the problem is that no large pharmaceutical firms want to get involved in vaccine production because of the time and cost involved. Many of our vaccines come from overseas plants today. That's part of the reason why the production of H1N1 vaccine was delayed, but to be clear, this is more about an overworked and underappreciated FDA than the need for new production facilities.

So why do these guys want to tell us about H1N1 vaccines? Do they really care about public health vaccines? Or do they really want some attention so that you'll listen to them talk about bioterrorism and their lobby friends can get some business to produce more BW agent vaccines? I'm thinking the latter. And then there's this part of the G-T comedy hour.

The consequences of ignoring these warnings could be dire. For example, one recent study from the intelligence community projected that a one- to two-kilogram release of anthrax spores from a crop duster plane could kill more Americans than died in World War II. Clean-up and other economic costs could exceed $1.8 trillion.

Now in what universe does a small release of anthrax cause more deaths than all those Americans who died in WW2, when bio weapons experts like Bill Patrick have told us that 50 kilos of anthrax would be needed to take out Washington DC? I don't think the intel community endorses this scenario; rather, the G-T team got a powerpoint slide from a certain senior bioterrorism adviser to the former administration that effectively makes an anthrax attack worse than a nuclear weapon.

A source tells me that this study uses a point source generator inside of a city to cause 1.9 to 3.4 million exposed, with 450,000 people becoming ill and 380,000 dead. City-wide decontamination is needed and the projected economic cost is greater than $1.6 trillion. This is just a brilliant case of fiction, designed to get the attention of people who usually wouldn't stop to talk about bioterrorism. I doubt that any intel community expert would give this scenario the time of day - but Senators Graham and Talent don't know that. They just repeat what they've been told.

It's just sad.

"When I say jump, you say, 'How high?'"

That would be Chuck "Don't Let Them Pull the Plug on Grandma" Grassley. Why does Obama want Republican approval so badly? Protective cover for the watered-down version he promised Big Pharma and the insurance companies?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The lead Republican senator in bipartisan health care negotiations said Tuesday that he urged President Obama this month to make clear he would accept a bill without a government-funded public insurance option.

"I told the president then that he needed to make public whether or not he could sign a bill that didn't have a public option in it," Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said on Radio Iowa. "He didn't have to take a position against a public option, but would he sign a bill that wouldn't have a public option in it, and I thought a statement from him would be very helpful."

Grassley and the five other bipartisan negotiators met with the president on August 6 to discuss their efforts toward a health care bill that can pass the Senate Finance Committee in September, when Congress returns from its August recess.

On Saturday, Obama said the "public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform."

Then on Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said a public option is "not an essential element" of overhauling the health care system.

Why is President Obama so much more concerned with what Republicans want? It's a mystery!

Robert Reich's blog :

When I worked in Washington, the biggest lobby - after Big Oil, and the big military contractors - was the big pharmaceutical companies - Big Pharma. Early in the Bush administration Big Pharma pushed the new Medicare drug benefit through Congress, releasing a $600 billion dollar gusher in their direction. The bill included a guarantee that Medicare wouldn't use its huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower prices with the drug companies - an extra bonus. If this isn't corporate welfare, I don't know what is.

Nancy Pelosi has announced that one of the Dems first priorities ("first hundred hours") would be to end this ban and have Medicare use its bargaining clout to get lower drug prices for seniors. But Big Pharma is already on the attack. Read on...

Joshua Muravchik jots down a few thoughts...Big Pharma would make a boatload of cash developing a new drug to break the denial people like Muravchik are afflicted with. Haven't they done enough damage already?

The Heretik: Problem? The four step Bush approach to problem solving shows itself again...and let's not forget what G-Dub said just a few months ago about disclosing classified information

The Enigmatic Paradox: For companies needing shills and writers, the dead stand head and shoulders over the living.

Talk To Action: For a quarter century, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), bankrolled by the founding funders and architects of the institutional right in Washington, DC, (such as the Heritage Foundation), has waged a war of attrition against the historic churches of mainstream Protestantism.

The Reaction: Liberalism Unbound: Shifting the center of gravity in American politics.

DARE Generation Diary: Students in High School drug raid to split $1.2 million. One small victory in the war against the drug war.

The Center for Public Integrity: Big Pharma puts $44 million into state lobbying.

Politics TV's coverage of a panel with David Brock, Helen Thomas and an interview with Al Franken.

The whistle-blowing article by Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman recounts how the author was approached to serve as the front author on a manuscript already written by a “medical education company” on behalf of a pharmaceutical company. The manuscript purported to be a review of interactions between warfarin and herbal remedies. The manuscript was provided to Dr. Fugh-Berman in essentially complete form, with her name on the first page as first author... the apparent goal of the manuscript was to disparage warfarin, the drug with which the pharmaceutical company’s new product would compete.

[I]s this really more of a conflict than traditional advertisers pose? I tend to think yes, since we're conditioned to be skeptical about ads, but tend to trust what looks like a well-researched article.

Panel members said Nogroski's work contained an alarming number of invalidated claims and irrelevant findings. They were particularly disconcerted by the figures in Nogroski's third paragraph, which begins "How do otters survive? Here are some facts about that."

"He didn't even say how they survive," Glass said. "He was just like, 'Otters are about one to 1.2 meters long. Otters' whiskers are about three inches long.'"

"I know!" Swain said. "It's like, 'Hey Mike, how do sea otters survive?' 'Dur. I'm Mike. Sea otters survive by being one meter long.'"

"Hey Mike," LaMott added. "What do sea otters eat? 'Dur, I'm Mike. Sea otters have whiskers that are three inches long. Also, I don't bathe and my jacket is acid-washed.'"

thoughts on the rise of pay-for-print -- when journals require authors to pay the printing costs. Often, if the authors can't afford it, their paper doesn't get printed. She wonders about conflicts of interest:

[I]s this really more of a conflict than traditional advertisers pose? I tend to think yes, since we're conditioned to be skeptical about ads, but tend to trust what looks like a well-researched article.

Panel members said Nogroski's work contained an alarming number of invalidated claims and irrelevant findings. They were particularly disconcerted by the figures in Nogroski's third paragraph, which begins "How do otters survive? Here are some facts about that."

"He didn't even say how they survive," Glass said. "He was just like, 'Otters are about one to 1.2 meters long. Otters' whiskers are about three inches long.'"

"I know!" Swain said. "It's like, 'Hey Mike, how do sea otters survive?' 'Dur. I'm Mike. Sea otters survive by being one meter long.'"

"Hey Mike," LaMott added. "What do sea otters eat? 'Dur, I'm Mike. Sea otters have whiskers that are three inches long. Also, I don't bathe and my jacket is acid-washed.'"

Alas, manuscripts full of illogical ramblings aren't confined to the realm of acid-washed third graders. And if only reviewers were this mature!

There is bone-snapping pressure of conservative not even to pursue PhDs! I simply don't believe that the "chilling effect" on conservatives can get much worse. Meanwhile, the warm, nurturing, environment for champions of Jackassery couldn't be much more encouraging. Hang Churchill (metaphorically of course). Send a signal...

Studying Churchill like he was a lab rat isn't a good idea precisely because he is exactly that -- a lab rat. Typical in every way; the baseline. No one studies lab rats qua lab rats anymore. You only study them after you've done something to them. The only thing that would make Ward Churchill interesting for study is if you cut him loose. See how the other lab rats react. I'm sorry if I sound to Machiavellian...