The Obama campaign will underestimate us at their own peril

I still can’t get over how mad this makes me:

“Millionaires and Billionaires” laughing at the waste of money and the fact that so many Americans are out of work. The head of GE giggling??? Who does this man think he is?

I was furious the first time I saw it and I’m still furious.

The news of 9.2% unemployment this morning reminded me of how cavalier this president is/was about the mess we are in. And then to hear from his lackey’s that Americans don’t care about the GDP or the debt ceiling. They only care about how things effect them in their own little world.

Oh Paaaaaaaahleaze! How condescending and what an insult!

Who do these people think they are talking to or about? I’m fairly certain they have no idea how smart and informed most of us are.

Underestimate us at your own peril, Obama!

The price of hope. The FDA says it’s too high.

I wrestled with this post because it’s Christmas and maybe not a time for this kind of topic.  But for many, it’s the price of their lives and their numbered days that should be talked about.

The FDA recently stopped the use of Avastin for the treatment of breast cancer.

By choking off the blood supply to a tumor and causing it to wither, it’s been effective in at least 50% of the patients who’ve used it and added months to their lives. Those months hold a glimmer of hope to the patients and their families that a cure might be found.

The cost of Avastin is $88,000 a year – not cheap by any means. But what is the price of the life of your mother or wife or sister or daughter? What is the price of hope?

I was on Temodar for 18 months. (As a side note, this drug is only given for up to 12 months but the doctors weren’t paying attention and I was on it for 6 months longer than recommended.)  It’s a chemo drug that is effective in about 75% of those who take it. It shrinks brain tumors like mine, except I was in the 25% group and it made no difference for me.

The price was $125/month because my insurance picked up the remaining tab- about $2200/month. You can do the math for a year on this drug.

The capsules came to me in the mail, once a month in a biohazard bag. 5 bottles with 3 pills in each one. I took 3 pills a day for 5 days a month. Like clockwork: about 5 hours after the first dose,, I started vomiting and did so for 2 straight days. I tried everything to prevent the nausea and vomiting: not eating before I took them, eating before I took them, eating dry popcorn or crackers, even tried smoking pot (which only made me feel more nauseous.) I took compazine and phenergan – with absolutely no results except I’d go to sleep for awhile just to wake up in time to reach the trash can beside my bed.

Doctor prescribed me a very expensive drug – Zofran. I remember going to the pharmacy to buy it and having the druggist tell me that it was going to cost me about $3000.

I started bawling right there in WalMart. What a scene I made of myself.

Throwing up 2 days a month was going to be my fate because we could not afford to pay for this drug.

So every month I got the medication, poured them out and stared at them for a while before I took them.  I’d tell myself that this is going to possibly save me – give me more time with my family – give me a chance at being a grandmother – afford me more time to right all the things and people I’d done wrong – buy me time for a cure to be found. I told myself it was worth it and it gave me hope. It gave my family hope, too.

Who are these 13 people on this FDA board to decide what is worth the risk and the  price and what is not?  The FDA claims that this is about risk but it’s not. It’s about the price of Avastin: $88,000/year.  This is the cap they are putting on hope. And why does anyone think they will stop at this drug and this price? When will it be Temodar or other chemo drugs that offer hope to patients and families enduring these types of life altering crisis?

They don’t care because with the new health care laws, we are only numbers and statistics.  Once our health information is put in a national data base (courtesy of Jeff Emmelt and GE) we are faceless, nameless case numbers. Our misery, our fears, our diseases, our hopes no longer exist.

Hope is not a factor to the FDA, the bureaucrats, the medical data entry personnel. Hope and a vision of the future is what makes humans different from all other creatures on this planet.  Take away our hope and what are we? What do we have left?

The answer: binary numbers in a computer data base.

SCOTUS rules to protect free speech

4 of the 9 Supreme Court justices are in favor of book banning and speech censorship. F-O-U-R  of them. And the 5 who voted in favor of the First Amendment are being called ACTIVISTS. Now, isn’t that ironic? To be in favor of the Constitution is now considered radical.

Amazing.

The case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission was decided last week by the U.S. Supreme Court, in a sqeeker vote that should scare all Americans. This case has unveiled to the public, the justices who would be in favor of censoring free speech and who are willling to ignore the first amendment’s stark and direct language:

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”

How much clearer could the Founders have been?

From the AP:

When the Supreme Court first heard the case in March, Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart, representing the FEC, was pulled into a discussion of an issue that took him down a slippery slope: If the movie were a book, would the government ban publishing the book if it mentioned a candidate for office within the election time frame?

Stewart said that it could.

“That’s pretty incredible,” Justice Samuel Alito said.

Then came questions about electronic devices such as the Kindle.

“If it has one name, one use of the candidate’s name, it would be covered, correct?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked.

“That’s correct,” Stewart replied.

“It’s a 500-page book, and at the end it says, ‘And so vote for X,’ the government could ban that?” Roberts asked.

[David] Bossie [founder of Citizens United and maker of Hillary the Movie] said this was the argument that turned a majority of the bench against the FEC and in favor of Citizens United.

“That sent a chill down the Supreme Court,” Bossie said. The argument became a “point of demarcation.”

The marxists progressives are now screaming outrage. This from the Wall Street Journal:

President Obama was especially un-Presidential yesterday, putting on his new populist facade to call it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies” and other “special interests.” Mr. Obama didn’t mention his union friends as one of those interests, but their political spending will also be protected by the logic of this ruling. The reality is that free speech is no one’s special interest. New York Senator Chuck Schumer vowed to hold hearings, and the Naderite Public Citizen lobby is already calling for a constitutional amendment that bans free speech for “for-profit corporations.” Liberalism’s bullying tendencies are never more on display than when its denizens are at war with the speech rights of its opponents.

But the marxists progressives make no mention of networks like MSNBC that is owned by the corporate giant General Electric and that has been nothing short of the communications center for the Obama administration. This case protects their free speech, as well.

As David Bossie writes at BigJournalism.com:

Finally, as the Court acknowledged, the position that corporations cannot engage in political speech has a fatal logical flaw.  Almost every major media outlet in the country is owned by a corporation and most of them advocate for or against candidates via endorsements, opinion columns, or politically-oriented programming.  Why should General Electric, which owns MSNBC, be permitted to use its nearly unlimited resources to influence elections, while I, who made Hillary The Movie using corporate funds for roughly .03% of the budget, could be put in prison for airing the documentary?

What is really frightening is that TheOne has 3 more years to appoint justices. One more liberal appointment could change the entire complexion of the Constitution and it’s protection of Americans. Those appointees have to be confirmed by congress. This is just another urgent reason that Constitutionalists must be elected this  year.