Tag: Evil Bastards

Cheap At The Price

Health

In our rush to save money, we often end up causing ourselves far bigger problems.  Here’s one example:

A common blood pressure drug has been recalled worldwide and production has stopped after it was found to contain a cancer-causing chemical.

The drug Valsartan, made in a factory in China, was recalled in 22 countries including the UK and the US earlier in July, but the warning is now worldwide.

Investigators found a chemical used in rocket fuel, called N-Nitrosodimethylamine, had contaminated the drug’s production at Zhejiang Huahai, a Chinese supplier which ships the medicine worldwide.

N-Nitrosodimethylamine is thought to be carcinogenic, meaning it could cause cancer in humans, so production of the pills has stopped.

China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission said yesterday that the drug must not be used for diagnosis or treatment, and the pills have already been banned in the UK and US.

Experts say the contamination could date back as far as 2012, when the company changed its manufacturing process.

The main manufacturer in China is Zhejiang Huahai, which was founded in 1989 and listed on the Shanghai stock exchange in 2003, was one of the first Chinese companies to get drugs approved in the US market.

Let’s hear it for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration…

Overall, more than two-thirds of all active drug ingredients originate in China and India, industry experts estimate, with China accounting for the lion’s share.

The revelation that the problem with Valsartan likely dates back to changes in manufacturing processes at Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical six years ago suggests many patients could potentially have been exposed to cancer risk.

I’ve been taking Valsartan every day for well over ten years.  At a rough guess, that’s around four thousand pills.

Switch

Politics

As anyone of a certain age will know, one of the Leftist tropes of the Vietnam War was the statement: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”  (Yes, I know those weren’t the major’s actual words, but that was what they became, thanks to that bastard Peter Arnett and the rest of the Leftist Anti-War School of Journalism.)  It is the expression which draws the glee of the Left because of its apparent paradox.

My, my, how times have changed.  In reading this article, I was struck by how the Left (in the persona of Bill Maher, but I bet he isn’t the only one) has come to adopt this trope as its own.  Think I’m kidding?  Try this:

Bill Maher, high priest of the Smart Set, despises the working class for its rejection of Hillary Clinton. On his June 8, 2018 broadcast, he hoped that the economy “crashes” so Trump will lose in 2020. Maher’s misanthropy is instructive. As Americans find their footing in a much improved labor market, Maher roots for disaster: lost jobs, lost health insurance, lost homes, aborted college educations, divorces, more opioid deaths.

In rooting for disaster, Maher is suggesting that there is salvation in Trump losing, and he doesn’t care how many Americans lose their jobs.

So in other words: he’s prepared to destroy the village in order to “save” it.

Of course, nobody should be surprised at any kind of inconsistency from the Left:  if the aim is gaining power, all can be excused — lies, lawbreaking, inconsistency, destruction of long-established institutions, whatever.

Here’s the thing, though.  In all the historic instances of the Left actually seizing total power, they always first made sure that they were the ones who had the guns — whether it was the mutinous Russian Army of 1917 which helped the Bolsheviks, the Wehrmacht and SS of Nazi Germany or the murderous Khmer Rouge death squads (to name but some).

That’s not the case here in our America, is it?  In fact, the American Left is the side without any guns, which is why they’ve taken great pains to politicize and weaponize government departments which do have guns (the IRS, the CIA, the FBI, etc.) who can oppress and terrorize the Left’s opponents (instead of “enemies foreign and domestic” — an easy thing to do once you’ve demonized your opposition and turned them into the enemy).  Which is also why the Left is the party of civilian disarmament:  despite their lying protestations to the contrary, they do want to take our guns away from us.  Makes it easier for all those Alphabet Agencies, doesn’t it?

I think that’s why I love this meme:

Make no mistake about it:  the lion has a very good chance of killing and eating the porcupine — eventually — but at great, perhaps even lethal cost to itself.  Now imagine another porcupine with no quills at all;  as the lion, which one would you rather tackle?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range.  My AK- and 1911 quills aren’t going to sharpen themselves, you know.

VDH Explains The Insanity

Politics

Not for the first time, Victor Davis Hanson explains why the Left have become so totally fucking unhinged:

The National Security Council was weaponized and thus unmasked the names of surveilled Americans and leaked their names to the press to undermine the Trump campaign. The Department of Justice was weaponized to ensure Hillary Clinton was exonerated for her misdeeds concerning her email server and quid pro quo collusion with a variety of foreign and domestic influence peddlers and buyers. The FBI and CIA were weaponized to subvert the Trump campaign, by peddling an unverified smear dossier, paid for by Hillary Clinton, by implanting informants into the Trump campaign, and by undermining a FISA court through dishonest presentations of evidence for warrants to spy on American citizens.
All such behavior was assumed to ensure the landslide Clinton victory and thus would be seen as sacrifice beyond the call of duty to be rewarded by a President Clinton not as illegal behavior to be punished during a Trump administration. And as a result, the more culpability that was exposed, the more the culpable went on the offensive—on the theory that constant attack is the best defense against their own criminal liability.

And they lost, and now they’re going to get investigated and people are (I hope) going to go to jail or face massive fines and criminal records or lose their pensions, or all the above (which I hope even more).  As Conrad Black puts it:

Now they must remove him, or he will try to imprison them, and in fact, they have almost no chance of removing him. We are doomed to a fierce battle that will end quickly if the Republicans hold the House of Representatives and Trump can get rid of Sessions and Rosenstein and indict his enemies, who have certainly asked for it.

It’s no less than the pricks deserve, and here’s a warning note to AG Sessions:  you’d better get it done, or you’ll be lumped in with them for failing to do your duty.

Dirty Saint

Africa, Two-Minute Hate

There’s an exhibition going on in London at the moment which is all about the life of the sainted Nelson Mandela, and predictably, all the Usual Suspects are oohing and ahhing about it.

Well, far be it for me to piss in anyone’s lobster bisque, here, but let’s have a little perspective on the man and his doings, shall we?  Brace yourselves.

“Today I don’t mourn Mandela’s passing. Instead, today I think of the people he murdered.  I think of them lying in their graves while for years he drank champagne and was fettered on the international stage as some kind of living god.  I think of all the people who have died since he became president of South Africa.  All the farmers, all the elderly, all the men, women and especially all the children, who died as a result of him being unleashed onto South Africa.

“And while the brainwashed celebrate his life and his so-called achievements, I remember that he pleaded guilty to 156 counts of public violence, including mobilizing terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places.  Many innocent people including women and children died because of Mandela and his MK terrorists.  For that he wasn’t hung by the neck until dead — instead he was given a life sentence in jail, the biggest mistake ever made by the South African judiciary.  For it gave the ANC time to white-wash his history and remake Mandela into a freedom fighter.  And with the help of Communists around the Western world, the reincarnation of Mandela the freedom fighter and Black activist was achieved.

“I’ll remember too that he released thousands of criminals, murderers and rapists from jail every year to celebrate his birthday while president, unleashing even more violence, chaos and death on the people of South Africa.  I’ll remember Mandela supporting some of the worst dictatorships and human rights abusers in the world:  Fidel Castro, Ghaddafi in Libya, China, Suddam Hussein in Iraq, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe… the list goes on.  No one too evil to visit or welcome in South Africa by Mandela, yet he was celebrated as a human rights champion by the world.

“I’ll remember that over 100,000 people were murdered under Mandela’s presidency –- an average of 25,000 people each year.  Up from 170 each year under Apartheid (1948-1989).  I’ll remember that in the first four years of his presidency, the South African currency lost 80% of its value and 2.8 million working days were lost due to strikes.  I’ll remember that the national debt doubled under Mandela.

“Yes , I will remember the failure that the man Nelson Mandela was.  Not the magical myth we’re supposed to believe in.  The world may have repackaged and re-branded him, but underneath he’s still the same murdering terrorist and Communist he always was.” — Lauren Southern

And there’s not one single falsehood in any of that.

Some saint.