Big Pharma's Wasteful Advertising

Just watching the NBC Evening News a few minutes ago I was yet again struck by the amount of needless, wasteful spending by the big pharmaceutical companies. In the half-hour broadcast there were five (5) ads - all for prescription drugs that no consumer can purchase on their own. Only doctors and physician assistants can write the required prescriptions, yet here we are with countless millions of dollars spent nationwide daily to market to viewers who cannot make the decision to prescribe the drugs pushed in the ads. Meanwhile, of course, the drug company reps are likewise spending lavishly entertaining doctors and physician assistants pushing the same drugs. My sister - a physician assistant - says that the drug reps she interfaces with market to her and others on the medical staff only at the very, very best [and most expensive] restaurants in town.

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With all the discussion of health care reform and the insane cost of many prescription drugs, I am baffled why no one has argued for the immediate cessation of such wasteful advertising spending by pharmaceutical companies with the savings passed on to the consumer. This kind of advertising makes no practical sense, particularly in a nation where over 47 million citizens have no health insurance coverage.

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Another wasteful example of a broken health care system is the monopoly games played by many non-profit hospital systems that place little focus on the provision of health care but great effort into wiping out competition. Tied this insanity is advertising by non-profit hospital systems that already have a near market monopoly. Locally, Sentara Health Systems is a case in point. Sentara controls five of the seven local hospitals in south Hampton Roads and has much more state of the art facilities than its competitors - two hospitals owned by the sisters of Bon Secours - yet Sentara continues massive television and print advertising campaigns. Why? And why can't this wasteful spending be eliminated so that savings could be passed along to consumers?

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One last question is this: why can't Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats ask these same questions?

More Monday Male Beauty

Meanwhile More Priests Charged With Sexual Abuse

The Roman Catholic Church has expended a large quantity of Crocodile tears in its feigned remorse over the sexual abuse of minors by priests and claims that it has purged its ranks of pedophiles. Like so much disseminated by the Church, the claims that all abusers have been removed are not true. Two new cases illustrate the continuing phenomenon. First, a situation from Ohio where a priest previously cleared by the diocese has again been charged with abuse. Here are some highlights:

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A former Catholic priest who served at St. Jude Church and is accused of having sexual contact with a teenage boy 12 years ago pleaded not guilty Thursday to a single count of sexual battery. . . . O’Connor, 51, resigned in June 2008 after the latest allegation against him surfaced when the victim in the case, who wasn’t a parishioner, came forward to the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland. The victim, now in his late 20s, was a teenager during the summer of 1997 when the sexual contact allegedly took place, according to prosecutors.

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O’Connor previously had been suspended as a priest between 2003 and 2007 while the church was investigating another sexual abuse allegation from his time as a priest at St. Joseph Church in Cuyahoga Falls during the 1980s. A diocese review board cleared him of those allegations, which surfaced in 2003 and prompted him to leave his position with the Police Department. O’Connor was reinstated as a priest in 2007, but the diocese restricted his access to children. O’Connor, who is free on bond, could receive up to five years in prison if convicted.

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Then, in Illinois a priest has been arrested for his involvement with a 15 year old boy he met through an Internet chat room. As I have said before, only a thorough house cleaning from top to bottom of the Catholic clergy will end this seemingly never ending story of abuse and inappropriate contact with minors. Here are highlights on the Illinois case:

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Wayne E. Wigglesworth of Valparaiso was arrested Aug. 17 after police pulled his vehicle over near the intersection of 60th and Rockwell streets in Chicago when Wigglesworth's vehicle made an improper turn. They found the 15-year-old teen with him, but the teen didn't know Wigglesworth's name.

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When police further questioned him, the teen said he met Wigglesworth through an Internet chat room, TeenChat.com., and they talked for several days. Wigglesworth eventually asked to meet the teen so they could perform oral sex on each other and then "hold and hug each other," according to the criminal complaint.

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Wigglesworth is being held without bond although no indictment has been filed against him in federal court. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Trumbull-Harris said the case was still being investigated and that anyone with information about improper conduct regarding Wigglesworth should call Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America

The Christian Century has a review of a book written by William Lobdell, a religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times, the full title of which is "Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America—and Found Unexpected Peace." I suspect that Lobdell's spiritual journey to unbelief resonates with many, particularly with the LGBT community which has been the target of some many lies and so much viciousness from allegedly "godly Christians." I also suspect that many in the younger generations who view Christianity negatively may identify as well. It seems that the behavior of Christians - and in Lobdell's case the Roman Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal - is one of the strongest arguments against Christianity. Indeed, it is proof, at least in the opinion of some, that institutional Christianity is an utter sham, peopled with hopelessly unloving practitioners such as the leaders of "professional Christian" organizations like The Family Foundation here in Virginia. Here are some review highlights:

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Former religion reporter William Lobdell's deconversion narrative, Losing My Religion, refrains from both bombast and suggestions of dopiness. By his very choice of genre—memoir rather than apologia—Lobdell enters a different territory of the new atheism, one already inhabited by several other counter conversion narrators, including John Loftus, who wrote Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity (Prometheus, 2008), and Dan Barker, author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists (Ulysses, 2008).

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He calls himself a "reluctant atheist" and a "skeptical deist." "With all that has happened to me," Lobdell says, "I don't feel qualified to judge anyone else.""All that has happened" includes, most notably, Lobdell's eight-year tenure on the religion beat of the Los Angeles Times during the breaking of the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal.

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Then a colleague of Lobdell's passed him some documents about a priest named Michael Harris who was named in a clergy sex abuse lawsuit. . . . It was the first of more than $1 billion worth of settlements with victims of clergy sex abuse across the nation. Lobdell became convinced that as chilling as the pedophile priests' actions were, the real story lay in the bishops' cover-ups of the felonies, their quiet transfers of accused clergy to new and unsuspecting parishes, and the Catholic Church's revictimization of the victims.

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The Harris case dealt Lobdell's personal faith what he calls a "spiritual body blow." . . . But the deeper he got into the story, the more difficult it became to square the sins of the church with his image of a loving and powerful God. "I couldn't get the victims' stories or the bishops' lies—many of them written on their own stationery, undeniable and permanent—out of my head," he writes. "Like a homicide detective, I had seen too much."

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Lobdell depicts the ebbing of his faith as inevitable, something that he could not control or choose to fight. Many people assume that Christians-turned-agnostics make a conscious decision to leave the faith, but he insists that in his case that's simply not true. "As deeply as I missed my faith, as hard as I tried to keep it, my head could not command my gut.

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While the review goes on to critique Lobdell for not retaining his faith, personally, I he is very much on point. As a former Catholic I find it difficult to even walk into a Catholic Church given the hypocrisy and evilness of the Church hierarchy. While I still consider myself Christian, it is in spite of not because institutional Christianity.

Angst Over Obama's Hapless Weakness Continues to Grow

No matter what lunacy the GOP and its deranged base decides to put forth, President Obama continues to act like the class nerd who runs from confrontation and yields the field by default to the lunatic fringe of the freeper swamps. Like many Democrats who not only voted for Obama but also worked for his campaign and advocated for his campaign, I feel that I was sold a false bill of goods. With majorities in both houses of Congress and a Democrat in the White House, the Democrats should have been able to move forward with the agenda that Obama was elected to oversee. Instead, we see the increasingly irrational and out right bizarre elements of the GOP calling all the shots and Obama unable to control "blue dog" Democrats who are selling the public out in favor of large donations from the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies. America Blog has a new post that looks ate comments from readers that well sums up the level of disgust among those who worked to get Obama and a Democrat majority elected:

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Let me share with you some of the recent, and most popular, comments our readers have left regarding the President's actions of late. I really feel in my gut that these are illustrative of what Democrats are saying across the country about the President. This is very dangerous for the President, the party, and for our agenda that things have gone this sour, and this public.

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I still can't believe that I actually worked to get this "wuss" elected. . . . Obama's version of chess is the one in which you simply allow your opponents to place you in "check" every move and considering that, the fact that they haven't managed to "mate" you; considering that some kind of victory. I know a "wuss" when I see one and I'm seeing one right now: Obama.

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It's not what I voted for or donated money to either. I don't appreciated getting punked by the man so many millions worked so hard for to get elected. . . . Hillary is laughing her ass off right about now.

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You take the polls where the majority of the public wants the public option and tell the Blue Dogs to get on board by educating their constituents. . . . What you don't do is insult your base, and you don't let a party determined to see you fail and few scared politicians in unsafe districts, who are probably going to lose anyway because life isn't fair, dictate against the tide of public opinion. That is, unless you are scared shitless because the industry deals you made at the start when you were pretending to negotiate in good faith (and transparency) on the part of the public are falling apart before your eyes.

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If the Democrats cannot perform better than this and maintain party unity and discipline, then they do not deserve to be in charge and, sadly, I believe more and more rank and file voters are appalled and figuring this out. It takes real effort to be defeated by crazy people when you had a amazing position strength when the battle began. This debacle is spilling over from the national front to hurt Democrats in statewide races in Virginia and New Jersey - if they fail, the media and the lunatic elements of the GOP will be trumpeting victory and a repudiation of Obama. And Obama will have no one to blame but himself.

Monday Male Beauty

Obama Speaking to Children and Right Wing Insanity

UPDATED: Pam's House Blend has the text of Obama's speech here. Reading the speech only reenforces my thoughts on why the GOP's lunatic fringe is so unwound by the speech - because it's a black man delievering a message that, if heard and followed by students from other minority groups, indirectly might further undermine the white privilege the wingers cling to.

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I haven't commented until now on the increasing bat shittery - to use one of Pam Spaulding's terms I love - of the lunatic base of the Republican Party that is utterly melting down over President Obama making a speech about personal responsibility and remaining in school. This topic is precisely what the GOP claims to support, hence why the sobbing nut jobs and irrational foaming at the mouth? People in other parts of the world must truly look at the USA and think that their is some insanity inducing agent in the water in some locals. How else to explain utterly bizarre and insane conduct?

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Personally, I believe a couple things are in play: (1) as the photo above indicates, I believe that not so subtle racism is at play, and (2) with the exodus of moderates and intellectuals from the GOP the base of the GOP is becoming increasingly ignorant, uneducated, paranoid and down right pathological. I truly fear where such detachment from reason and logic may lead. The Seattle Post Intelligencer has a column that looks at the insanity of the far right which acts as if Obama is doing something that other presidents have not previously done. Here are some highlights:

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He pledged to be "the education president," so it was fitting in 1991 that President George H. W. Bush gave a speech to America's schoolchildren aimed at motivating kids to "strive for excellence."
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Eighteen years later, President Obama is about to give a similar talk that will encourage students to work hard, set educational goals for themselves and take responsibility for their learning. The president's persist-and-succeed speech, set for Sept. 8, has produced a wellspring of hate from the far right. Hate talk radio is even urging parents to keep kids home from school.

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Far-right media are engaged in niche marketing. The likes of a Limbaugh, O'Reilly or Beck attract a hard-core audience, deliver designated devil figures, and play on fears of gullible, resentful -- and largely elderly -- people. With Obama's speech to students, other goals come into play. With right-thinking Supreme Court justices leading the way, conservatives have long sought to limit young peoples' free expression, from censoring student newspapers to penalizing students for holding up signs off campus.

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The 2008 Obama campaign energized the young in numbers not seen since the 1960's. At an Obama rally in Bend, Ore., last year, a 17-year-old high school student served as warm up act, delivering a cogent analysis of all that the Bush administration had wrecked. National Review online picked up my article. It condemned the kid, which put him on the receiving end of hate mail.

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The Obama speech seems largely an appeal for students keep on truckin' and never get discouraged. It's not all that different from the thoughts of Bush Sr. Or the stay-in-school message delivered at East High School in Anchorage last week by Alaska's new GOP Gov. Sean Parnell. Yet, in Anchorage, right-wing parents have demanded that the speech be blocked from the classroom. Districts in Missouri, Texas, Virginia -- even the president's home state of Illinois -- have opted not to show it.

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The action of Medina, Ohio, schools superintendent Randy Stepp is a typical cave in: Civics education -- not just sex education -- is getting censored by crazies.

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The far right has been on a rampage this summer. "Birthers" have disrupted lawmakers' town meetings with the false claim that Obama was born in Kenya. Opponents of health care reform have carried posters depicting the president as The Joker from Batman movies, even as Adolf Hitler.

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The vast majority of Americans are civil and tolerant. Most people want presidents to succeed, even if their candidate came up short in the last election. The country loses footing when an administration flops: Look at the last eight years. Instead, the far right and its media megaphones -- notably Fox News -- debase debate, spread lies, and demean a president 200 days into his term.

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Joe Scarborough, congressman from the Republicans' Class of 94, Florida conservative, now host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, speaks the truth to the crazies -- and their enablers. "Where are the national GOP leaders speaking out against this kind of hysteria?" Scarborough asked Friday in a Twitter entry.

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Truth be told, the national GOP leadership has become just as nasty and debased as the Party's base. Ignorance and religious extremism are now the hallmarks of a party that once prided itself on educated and thoughtful conservatism. Those days are gone, perhaps forever.

Panel to Discuss Virginia Courts and Judiciary

The Waynesboro News Virginian has a timely story that needs much more publicity - the Virginia Coalition for Open Government will be holding a meeting that will look at both the judicial selection process, controlled by the General Assembly, and other transparency issues. Virginia has some very good judges, but it also has some very bad ones. Moreover, the enforcement of the Canons of Judicial Conduct are an absolute farce with the blatant violation of the Canons having no effect on the outcome of cases where misconduct occurred. The litigant harmed by prejudice is left with only one recourse: appealing the adverse outcome with added cost and expense involved and no guarantee of the ruling being overturned. The biased or homophobic judge (the majority of gays in divorce cases for instance appear to receive punative treatment for "choosing" to be gay and judges get away with this violation of the Canons regularly) may or may not get their wrist slapped, but most often it seems no adverse consequence to the offending judge is the norm. Here are some story highlights:

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Virginia’s judiciary will be the top topic of an annual conference this fall on opening the working of government to public view. The judicial selection process, controlled by the General Assembly, and a hot-button proposal to make jurors anonymous in criminal cases will be debated by panelists at Access 2009, a conference convened by the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. The judicial topics will occupy two of the four panels on the second day of the conference, scheduled for Oct. 15 and 16 at the Stonewall Jackson Hotel in Staunton.

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A group of citizens, known as the “Pitchfork Rebellion,” have called this year for a public examination of judicial selection. Virginia is one of two states in which the legislature elects judges, but direct election isn’t the primary issue under debate. The group has expressed more concern about the lack of openness in the way judicial candidates are evaluated and chosen, and it wants a public forum on whether to change the selection process and how.

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Whether some changes will be forthcoming will be interesting to watch. Currently, there seems to be few standards for appointment to the bench and judges in the past have been appointed by ultra-conservative members of the General Assembly because of their extreme far right views rather than experience and competence. This needs to end. In addition, the Canons of Judicial Conduct the prohibit biased judges from hearing cases need to start being enforced.

More Sunday Male Beauty

Hiding [And Deluding One's Self] Behind The Sacrament

Over at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish there has been a running discussion and commentary on the Roman Catholic Church's annulment process which is the Church's somewhat dubious way around granting divorces. Nonetheless, the process does address some issues such as when one spouse is gay/lesbian and foolishly - like was the case with me - believes their religious indoctrination and thinks that if the pray hard enough and get married the same sex attractions (even if not fully admitted as existing) will miraculously disappear. Sadly, it doesn't work that way and if the Roman Catholic Church were honest, it would admit that some people are born LGBT and allow them full church membership as they are - something the ELCA is thankfully attempting to do. One of the posts at Andrew's site struck home with me:

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I understand your skepticism of point 5. To demonstrate why such a vague description might be important, let me offer you the story of my parents' annulment. My mother and father married in good faith, mostly. I say "mostly" because "good faith" on my mother's end meant that she thought God's blessing on her marriage would end her attraction to women. It did not.

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It's sort of a dramatic case, but I think it's illustrative: a lot of people put a great deal of faith in the sacrament of marriage to cure woes it actually cannot. My mother thought, mistakenly, that marriage would end her conflict about her sexuality by magically making her straight.

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I am pleased to report that coming out of the closet actually cured most of her conflict about her sexuality -- by allowing her to accept who she was. Although "Lack of appreciation of the full implications of marriage" is vague enough to include, say, not understanding that marriage is forever, I think the clause is there more for people like my mom, whether it's because they're gay or for another reason.

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Many straight spouses mistakenly believe that their gay spouse deliberately sought to fool them and entered into marriage in bad faith - mine certainly seems to believe so - when in reality that not the case whatsoever. Both the straight spouse and the gay spouse are, in my view, victims of a religious belief system that ignores reality and modern knowledge on sexual orientation. Tragically, all concerned suffer harm even though neither spouse sought to do anything other than what they believed was expected and required by God. The sooner the antiquated and false religious concept of condemning homosexuality is thrown in the trash bin of history, the better off countless LGBT and straight individuals will be.