Testing, Testing 1,2,3…
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Waxman prepares to roll big Pharma…
Ahh Billy, Billy. What were you thinking trusting any deal with this Administration? Tsk, tsk. Karmic backlash.
Ed has all the details at HotAir:
Barack Obama picked up considerable political support for his overhaul of the American health-care system by promising a limit on price concessions to the pharmaceutical manufacturers. They signed onto ObamaCare after getting assurances that their givebacks would amount to no more than $80 billion over 10 years and that the federal government would not try to bargain for lower pricing using its advantage through Medicare. Henry Waxman plans to renege on just about every aspect of that agreement:
As the health care debate focuses on whether cost cuts are looming in Medicare coverage, Representative Henry A. Waxman is on a crusade to save Medicare billions of dollars — in a way that he says would end up helping the elderly.
That is because the money would come from the drug industry, which is why Mr. Waxman may have a fight on his hands.
Drug makers contend they have already worked out a 10-year, $80 billion cost-savings deal with the White House and crucial Senate gatekeepers on the trillion-dollar health care overhaul. The industry says that trying to add Mr. Waxman’s provision could scuttle that agreement.
“You not only break the deal, but you break the bank for us,” said Billy Tauzin, chief executive of the drug industry’s trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA….
Cry me a river Billy you jaggoff. Pharma has the biggest profit margin of all the playas in this line of business and they were skating away, just like they did on Medicare PT D, and leaving Americans to bear the brunt of a POS reform package in some kind of frakkin protection racket they have going up in the Oval these days…Nice little pill business you have there, shame if anything were to happen to it…as we have said here numerous times, if he sold out Americans for 150m ad deal in exchange for ‘protection’ from the jackboots running the House right now he is a fool.
Phil Collins video courtesy of nik0la007
Dominick Dunne passes away…
God Bless Him, I hope his daughter Dominique was waiting for him at the pearly gates.
Courtesy of SamMalone441459
I first came across Dominick Dunne’s work when my mother loaned me The Two Mrs. Grenvilles. My mom loves to follow Hollywood Babylonesque chatter. I began reading him again when his daughter was murdered while working on “V” the original miniseries. And of course she was the oldest daughter in ‘Poltergeist’, my fave movie when I was 11. I followed the trial and followed Dominick’s coverage of crime in high society afterward.
Courtesy of CultureNow
The Irish in me has to note his book a Season in Purgatory, was widely held as a Kennedy expose, and which to be truthful really shook me up and made me look into the Martha Moxley case also. And of course he covered every minute of the William Kennedy Smith rape trial as well.
A Season in Purgatory -YA-The Bradleys are a large, rich, powerful, Irish-Catholic family, headed by a ruthless patriarch who is bent on having his favorite son, Constant, become president. Mrs. Bradley is a religious, designer-clad mother who shuts her eyes to her husband’s numerous affairs. Harrison Burns is Constant’s poor but bright friend. They attend the same exclusive prep school. One night, Constant beats a young girl to death, and Harrison helps him cover it up. Twenty-two years later, he can’t bear the guilt of his complicity in the crime and decides to confess. Can he bring the Bradley dynasty down with him? Dunne, who has previously paralleled real life in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (Crown, 1985), has written a real page-turner that looks into the lives of a wealthy, morally corrupt American family.
More and clips after the break:
Update: Halloween 2 – Behind the Scenes…
Update, 2nd vid added:
Courtesy of DimensionHorror:
HALLOWEEN II – IN THEATERS THIS FRIDAY!!
Click below to become a friend of the Dimension Horror Channel and get access to exclusive content.
http://www.youtube.com/peeps?action_i…
Courtesy of FansoftheMovie
Our previous posts on Rob Zombie and the Halloween remakes here
GQ: A Sober Look at Ted Kennedy…
GQ, 1990. 17 pages, very informative:
…The last Kennedy had so few choices, really. He was born to be the baby of the family, not the patriarch; the fourth brother, not the only one; the also-Kennedy, not the President Kennedy. When he was a chubby-cheeked little boy, the family was packed with grown-ups. They all went away. Joseph junior died when Teddy was 12. Kathleen died when he was 16. Jack died when he was 31. Bobby died when he was 36. The king himself, Joe senior, died when he was 37.
“To be truly human,” Ted Kennedy once said, “is to shape your own world.” And he has, far more than most men dream of, done just that. He has made laws. He has been at the front of sweeping change, improving the lives of many people. He has helped perpetuate a dynasty. The truth is, however, the world shapes us far more than we shape it. The truth is, the forces of the world—the rules of primogeniture, the warp of genetics and the woof of environment, the killing power of bullets and the grip of alcohol—shaped Ted Kennedy and shape him still. It is the sad irony of his life that while he has wrought his will on the world at large he remains unable still to control his own life. He started out in this world dangling from strings held by his father and his brothers. They’re gone now, but Teddy dangles still, dancing to the echoes of an old and tired tune…
Market Mover Wednesday: New Home Sales rise; median price falls; Durable goods up…
The durable goods number is not as good as the top line would suggest, see below, but the new home sales and the drop in new home inventory is great news, but again I caution as I think it is driven largely by deep deeeep discounting and the new home buyers tax credit which is about to expire…the unemployment data for August and GDP are our next big data points…
…The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for goods expected to last at least three years increased 4.9 percent in July, the third rise in the past four months. Analysts expected a 3 percent increase. Orders for June were revised up to a 1.3 percent drop, from a 2.2 percent decline.Orders for transportation equipment, which rose 18.4 percent, drove the overall increase. Commercial aircraft orders, a volatile category, more than doubled after falling 30 percent in June. Motor vehicle orders increased 0.9 percent.
Excluding transportation goods, orders rose 0.8 percent. That was the third straight increase, but just below analysts’ expectations of a 0.9 percent rise…
Sales of newly built U.S. single-family homes rose for a fourth straight month in July to set their fastest pace since last September, while the inventory of unsold homes fell to the lowest level in 16 years, a government report showed on Wednesday.The Commerce Department said sales rose 9.6 percent to a 433,000 annual pace, the highest in ten months, from an upwardly revised 395,000 in June. That was the biggest monthly percentage gain since a matching increase in February 2005. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a 390,000 rate.
Median price down y/y, flat m/m:
The median home sales price in July fell 11.5 percent to $210,100 from a year earlier, the department said. Compared to June, the median price slipped 0.1 percent.
And the inventory is finally falling:
..The inventory of homes available for sale in July fell 3.2 percent to 271,000 units, the lowest since March 1993, the department said.
Mr Blandings clip courtesy of KayMiniver
Supernatural Season 5: inside scoop and spoilers…
Update: Seasons Two and Three box DVD sets of Supernatural are on sale right now for $19.99! See here
Video by goodintentions89
…As avid fans know, the demon-hunting Winchester brothers, Sam and Dean (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles), inadvertently released Lucifer from hell in the fourth-season finale, setting the stage for the end of the world, and creator and executive producer Eric Kripke promises a big ol’ scorching of the Earth in the upcoming fifth season.
“Oh, it’s the Apocalypse,” Kripke and his fellow co-executive producers Sera Gamble and Ben Edlund said in a small group interview last month. “We’re not promising the Apocalypse and then hedging our bets.”
SPOILERS AFTER THE BREAK!
Update: Critter demands ID from attendee!! Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA)Townhall with Howie Dean…
Update: Oh it just gets better Moran moron, demands id from an attendee who he is convinced is bused in, this as AFCSME and SEIU are sitting in front of him with their OFA signage!! UnbelIEVable!! vote this yahoo out VA!
Courtesy of ifbnews