Archive | June 27, 2004

It’s traditional in most of the newsgroups and forums go on until one
wingnut accuses the other of acting like Hitler. At that point, the
fight has degenerated to silliness and is ignore by anyone with common
sense. The anti-Bush campaign saw Hitler in a proposed ad and wisely
nixed it. If only the President’s campaign had the same sense of
decency.

Dan Gillmor’s eJournal blogs No Shred of Decency:

NY Times: Hitler Reappears in ’04 Campaign, This Time in Bush Ad. President
Bush’s campaign Web site is featuring an advertisement casting Senator
John Kerry and his allies as a “coalition of the wild-eyed,” blending
clips of former Vice President Al Gore, former Gov. Howard Dean of
Vermont and the filmmaker Michael Moore shouting about Mr. Bush.
Interspersed twice are images of a shouting Hitler, drawn from a Web
spot that MoveOn.org, the Internet advocacy group that runs anti-Bush
advertisements, briefly posted months ago in a contest for
advertisements about the president.

Dan goes on to write: “The clip of Hitler came from an ad submitted to MoveOn.org’s “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest — an ad that MoveOn disavowed as soon as it was noticed and, quite properly, attacked for its inflammatory nature.

But the Bush campaign has no trouble using the same images
(wmv video) to slander political opponents and critics of its radical
policies. Just when you imagine they couldn’t sink any lower in their
tactics, the Bush people find a way.
If this slimy ad were to be aired on television — on the airwaves Bush
and so many others are so eager to censor to stop “indecency” —
campaign laws would require him to personally endorse it. He doesn’t
have to personally vouch for this garbage when it’s on the Web. Maybe
that’s why it’s online.”

The Future of Free Weather Data on the Internet [Slashdot]
Please follow this link and read about the question of whether the NOAA
should subsidize business by making their information not freely
available to all. There’s a link in the article header for you to
submit your own comment. Also, take a look here where the NOAA is
explaining the issue and seeking comments.

New York Times: NYT HomePage reports As Doctors Write Prescriptions, Drug Company Writes a Check.
“An investigation has shed light on the system of financial lures that
drug companies use to persuade doctors to favor their products.” 
By Gardiner Harris.

In many ways, the investigations are a response to the evolution of the
pharmaceutical business, which has grown in the last quarter-century
from a small group of companies peddling a few antibiotics and
antianxiety remedies to a $400 billion bemoth that is among the most
profitable industries on earth… Offering
treatments for almost any affliction and facing competition in which
each percentage point of market share can represent tens of millions of
dollars, most drug makers now spend twice as much marketing medicines
as they do researching them.

This sounds like a market out of control. The arangements between
the manufacturers and distributors (doctors) leave the patient worried
about getting an informed an impartial decision, while the patients are
left ignorant of the economics of the arrangement, both between
manufacturer and doctor, and in what their insurance ends up paying.
This is capitalism with a fatal flaw: deals go on in the back room that
the players aren’t aware of. When the system is made transparent,
products can compete far more fairly.