Last week Allisons basketball team won 2nd place in the district finals. She had three games and it was a busy week. As captain of her team, she worked very hard to help the team achieve this victory. These next few weeks they will compete for the state title.
 He and his partner went to the state qualifiers meet on saturday and attempted to make it to state. They did not even place in the top ten. But we are so proud of the hard work that has gone into this season.Â
My friend Mark, the father of Jeffs partner, took some pictures of them debating a few weeks ago when they won 7th place out of about forty teams. They are tenth graders debating the big political questions of our day, and we are so pleased that they are taking the time to articulately learn how to debate the important topics with some of the smartest teens in Colorado.
President Obama keeps Politicking for his friends, but they don’t seem to win…Coakley in Mass comes to mind…but keep on, PLEASE, Keep on…
“As far as I’m concerned, the best thing that could happen for the Republican candidate for this seat is for Bennet to keep reminding people that he’s just Obama’s water boy.”
“It’s being called the largest research fraud in medical history. Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer’s speakers’ bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to faking dozens of research studies that were published in medical journals.
Now being reported across the mainstream media is the fact that Dr. Reuben accepted a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to study Celebrex in 2005. His research, which was published in a medical journal, has since been quoted by hundreds of other doctors and researchers as “proof” that Celebrex helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery. There’s only one problem with all this: No patients were ever enrolled in the study!
Dr. Scott Reuben, it turns out, faked the entire study and got it published anyway.
It wasn’t the first study faked by Dr. Reuben: He also faked study data on Bextra and Vioxx drugs, reports the Wall Street Journal.
As a result of Dr. Reuben’s faked studies, the peer-reviewed medical journal Anesthesia & Analgesia was forced to retract 10 “scientific” papers authored by Reuben. The Day of London reports that 21 articles written by Dr. Reuben that appear in medical journals have apparently been fabricated, too, and must be retracted.
After being caught fabricating research for Big Pharma, Dr. Reuben has reportedly signed a plea agreement that will require him to return $420,000 that he received from drug companies. He also faces up to a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.
Business as usual in Big Pharma
“What’s notable about this story is not the fact that a medical researcher faked clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not the fact that so-called “scientific” medical journals published his fabricated studies. It’s not even the fact that the drug companies paid this quack close to half a million dollars while he kept on pumping out fabricated research.
The real story here is that this is business as usual in the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. Reuben’s actions really aren’t that extraordinary. Drug companies bribe researchers and doctors as a routine matter. Medical journals routinely publish false, fraudulent studies. FDA panel members regularly rely on falsified research in making their drug approval decisions, and the mainstream media regularly quotes falsified research in reporting the news.
Fraudulent research, in other words, is widespread in modern medicine. The pharmaceutical industry couldn’t operate without it, actually. It is falsified research that gives the industry its best marketing claims and strongest FDA approvals. Quacks like Dr Scott Reuben are an important part of the pharmaceutical profit machine because without falsified research, bribery and corruption, the industry would have very little research at all.
Pay special attention to the fact that the Anesthesia & Analgesia medical journal gladly published Dr. Reuben’s faked studies even though this journal claims to be a “scientific” medical journal based on peer review. Funny, isn’t it, how such a scientific medical journal gladly publishes fraudulent research with data that was simply invented by the study author. Perhaps these medical journals should be moved out of the non-fiction section of university libraries and placed under science fiction.”
If you are interested in learning more about Mothers working in Politics, read this book!
p. 128
“During our first week of conferencing with the oil executives, every man–and they were all men– who entered that room knew things had changed. I made a point of saying “We’re leaving the door open.” Their inches-thick proposals would be displayed out in the reception area for the public and the media to see.
Our approach to moving the gasline forward was both inovative and simple: Explain the importance of gasline development to ordinary Alaskans. And get them involved. That meant our war room became every kitchen table, town hall, classroom, and living room across the Last Frontier. We reached out. We asked citizens, “These are your resources, so what do you think?””
Internally, our natural gas mantra was “Greenies, Grannies, and Gunnies.”
Greenies: Natural gas is the cleanest nonrenewable fuel.
Grannies: Production of a domestic supply from Alaska would help those on fixed incomes, such as the elderly, by increasing supply and lowering costs in a more stable price environment.
Gunnies: Alaskas energy supplies would help lead America toward energy independence and greater national security.
Greenies, Grannies. Gunnies. So Alaskan, So Politically Incorrect.
Perfect.”
P. 133
“I also trimmed the state food budget by keeping our home’s freezer stocked with the wild seafood we caught ourselves, as well as organic protein sources hunted by friends and family. We kept an interesting variety of food that way. If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?”
Â
(*I was a vegan/vegetarian for many years and even I laughed out loud when I read that one…)
Â
P. 293
“I was standing onstage when a campaign consultant whispered some last-minute advice on voice inflection. I hated to drop a bomb on her, but I’d been talking the same way for forty-four years and doubted our few moments alone would miraculously reform my style. Besides, I thought of all the money Tina Fey was making imitating me; I didn’t want to screw up her SNL thing by changing up on her midstream. I’m all about job security for the American Worker.”
“Dewey Whetsell a longtime commercial fisherman, veteran fire fighter and fire chief, jazz musician, and poet from Alaska penned a very nice retort to all of those who would say Sarah Palin isn’t the real deal, a true leader.
Those who follow Alaska politics know these stories well, but the rest of America should understand this as well.
You can check out Dewey Whetsell’s website here, the man has a very interesting life’s story.
Here is Dewey’s letter:
“The last 45 of my 66 years I’ve spent in a commercial fishing town in Alaska. I understand Alaska politics but never understood national politics well until this last year. Here’s the breaking point: Neither side of the Palin controversy gets It’s not about persona, style, rhetoric, its about doing things. Even Palin supporters never mention the things that I’m about to mention here.
1- Democrats forget when Palin was the Darling of the Democrats, because as soon as Palin took the Governors office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republicans Corrupt Bastards Club (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits. The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing la la la la (well, you know how they are). Name another governor in this country that has ever done anything similar. But while you’re thinking, I’ll continue.
2- Now with the CBC gone, there were fewer Alaskan politicians to protect the huge, giant oil companies here. So, she constructed and enacted a new system of splitting the oil profits called ACES. Exxon (the biggest corporation in the world) protested and Sarah told them don’t let the door hit you in the stern on your way out. They stayed, and Alaska residents went from being merely wealthy to being filthy rich. Of course the other huge international oil companies meekly fell in line. Again, give me the name of any other governor in the country that has done anything similar.
3- The other thing she did when she walked into the governors office is she got the list of State requests for federal funding for projects, known as pork. She went through the list, took 85% of them and placed them in the when-hell-freezes-over stack. She let locals know that if we need something built, well pay for it ourselves. Maybe she figured she could use the money she got from selling the previous governors jet because it was extravagant. Maybe she could use the money she saved by dismissing the governor’s cook (remarking that she could cook for her own family), giving back the State vehicle issued to her, maintaining that she already had a car, and dismissing her State provided security force (never mentioning, I imagine, that she’s packing heat herself). I’m still waiting to hear the names of those other governors.
4- Now, even with her much-ridiculed gosh and golly mannerism, she also managed to put together a totally new approach to getting a natural gas pipeline built which will be the biggest private construction project in the history of North America. No one else could do it although they tried. If that doesn’t impress you, then you’re trying too hard to be unimpressed while watching her do things like this while baking up a batch of brownies with her other hand.
5- For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. This summer, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.6- President Obama wants the nation to be on 25% renewable resources for electricity by 2025. Sarah went to the legislature and submitted her plan for Alaska to be at 50% renewables by 2025. We are already at 25%. I can give you more specifics about things done, as opposed to style and persona . Everybody wants to be cool, sound cool, look cool. But that’s just a cover-up. I’m still waiting to hear from liberals the names of other governors who can match what mine has done in two and a half years. I wont be holding my breath.
By the way, she was content to to return to AK after the national election and go to work, but the haters wouldn’t let her. Now these adolescent screechers are obviously not scuba divers. And no one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off. Shoulda known better.”
