Laugh at Liberals Archive for October, 2004
How’s this for an October surprise?
While John Kerry is running around claiming President George Bush and our troops overseas failed the American people by not guarding an explosives dump without explosives in it, documents have been uncovered at Texas Tech University that show Kerry was following Vietnam War protest guidelines from North Vietnamese communists in the early 1970s.
“Wait! Why am I not seeing any of this in the national news media, Mr. Gaylon?” you might be asking. “This cannot be true. Our Democrat candidate for president surely wasn’t on the side of the communists and carrying out their requests when he got home from valiantly fighting for his country and winning all those medals, was he?”
Yes, he was.
The documents — which actually LOOK like they came from the 1970s and not from a Microsoft Word program — were found at the Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and reproduced from captured communist records. These documents have been PROVEN 100 percent authentic BEFORE their release, unlike those 60 Minutes National Guard documents that CBS refuses to investigate. They show that Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, the Viet Cong provisional governor of South Vietnam at the Paris Peace Talks, delivered a plan from Le Duc Tho — Ho Chi Minh’s second in command — for American anti-war activities that anti-war protesters followed to the letter.
These documents are available at www.worldnetdaily.com or www.wintersoldier.com and show anti-war protesters not only received approval from the communists in North Vietnam, but also their direction. One of the documents states, “The spontaneous antiwar movements in the U.S. have received assistance and guidance from the friendly (i.e. communist Vietnamese) delegations at the Paris Peace Talks.”
Another article at www.nysun.com/article/3756 also reflects on the North Vietnamese anti-war coordination with protest groups.
By the way, Madame Binh subsequently became the Minister of Information for the People’s Republic of Vietnam after Saigon fell. You know what “Minister of Information” means in communist countries, right?
Of these organizations, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the communist organizations Peoples Committee for Peace and Justice and National Peace Action Committee were represented at the talks. Some representatives of these groups had their airfare covered by the United States Communist Party.
Shortly after Kerry returned from the talks he delivered Madame Binh’s peace proposal through a press conference on July 22, 1971. He did so with veterans’ families around him, a tactic that was suggested by the communists. However, he said he only attended the peace talks because he was on his honeymoon in Paris.
There are two problems, Hanoi John met twice, and possibly thrice, with communist officials in Paris. Also, his honeymoon was spent at the Jamaica home of the Pershing family with then (other) heiress wife, Julia Thorne, in 1970. I suppose Paris was a second honeymoon.
Kerry had also met illegally with Binh in 1970 while he was still a Naval officer on inactive reserve status, and in fact, all his meetings were under the six-year window of the term of his enlistment. This precludes him from even running for elective office, much less president, but nobody is mentioning it for some reason. Amendment 14, Section 3 states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-president, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Other documents show the Hanoi plan for war protests, which was basically accepted and carried out by PCPJ, NPAC and VVAW and other protest groups, which eventually forced a vastly superior military force to capitulate to a sniveling gang of thugs because of propaganda and lies.
It was John Kerry’s finest hour.
So Kerry’s earnest presidential campaign begins and ends the same place it started: Vietnam. And the whole way, the national liberal news media have ignored his crimes. They are overlooking this new evidence while inflating a bogus charge from the United Nations against the president during a time of war. Kerry is helping spread the lie, again, working against his government for his own purposes.
Those who think this man is even an American — much less are willing to vote for him — ought to have their heads examined. But then again, so few people on the left even know what it means to BE American anymore that I doubt Kerry’s activities alarm, surprise or offend them. There is a growing body in the Democrat Party that sees nothing wrong with subservience to the United Nations on any and all issues. For them, Kerry must be a revelation.
But for Americans who do not trust an organization so guilty of greed, glorification of communism, thuggery, deception, virulent anti-Semitism and corruption, Kerry is anathema. His pursuit of the presidency should never have been allowed, but for all the left-wing propagandists in the media. They’ve refused to do their jobs and we’re paying the price with a lousy, traitorous Democrat candidate.
John Kerry took the direction of a foreign government in protesting one war and now he’s doing it again. This time, as with the last, he is a willing puppet of people opposed to American strength.
John Kerry is on the wrong side again, folks. I hope on Nov. 2 you’re on the right one.
ROLL THE TAPE
Tonight, ABC news will air an exclusive video, verified by the CIA and the FBI to be from the communication’s wing of al Qaeda. In the video a masked terrorists warns of “blood running in the streets” of America if George Bush is re-elected. ABC grappled with the idea of airing the tape so close to the election for fear of the impact it might have.
ROLL THE TAPE!
Let America see and hear the hate-filled diatribe. Let the world see how al Qaeda fears four more years of a Bush administration and would welcome John Kerry’s “sensitive” approach to fighting terrorism.
The truth, hidden between the lines of threats and bravado, will come out. al Qaeda fears George Bush. They do not fear John Kerry. al Qaeda knows a resounding victory for Bush in this election will unleash the death blow to their efforts to build a modern day caliphate that will rule the middle east through murder, fear and the control of the world’s oil supply.
ROLL THE TAPE!
The voters will see the chest-thumping for what it really is. America, under Bush’s strong and resolute leadership, has terrorism on the run. George Bush was not the kind of president Usama and Sadaam were expecting.
Principled leadership and the sacrifice of true patriots in our armed forces has kept us safe since 9/11. FOUR MORE YEARS!
Buck Evinger
Not CBS AGAIN!!
Ok, after the Dan Rather’s “fake documents” round, you would think that CBS would have been more careful than any other network…for awhile anyway. But NOOOO! Turns-out that CBS had intended to air the story that Bush failed to guard Al Qaqaa weapons stockpile. That would have been 36 hours before the election. That would have been so close that there would not have been time to show just how untrue the story was! But, thanks to their partner, The New York Times, stabbing them in the back to scoop them, we find-out with enough time for the WHOLE story to come out. Kerry hasn’t changed his story yet! He’s sticking to it. Let me see if I’ve got this right. A man who has spent months calling Bush a liar. Saying that there were no WMDs in Iraq, and that there is no connection between Iraq and the terrorists, is now saying that Bush is to blame for not guarding those weapons and that they might now be in the hands of terrorists!!??
NO MORNING FOR MAINSTREAM
Here’s another poem from contributor Russ Vaughn.
No Mourning for Mainstream
Ah, once so grand you owned this land,
With your wisdom you did ply us,
Until old dears this election year,
You at last unmasked your bias.
Yes, once were you our only view,
No challenge did you face.
You had your say and called the play,
‘Til the Blogs got in the race.
We’d like to see fair honesty
But our breath now we’re not holding
Because we know how really low
Are the odds of that unfolding
So what is left when we’re bereft
Of hearing truth from you?
We’ll place our bet on the Bloggers’ net
To let the truth come through.
That pajama’d host really wants to roast
Your assets that’s for certain.
To debunk the myth of your monolith,
On your act to drop the curtain.
Alas old dears, you’re done we fear,
Your dynasties doomed to tatters,
And ‘tween the coasts your opinions toast,
About anything that matters.
Russ Vaughn
Stephanie vs. Draco
If you’ve been around LaughAtLiberals.com, you’ve noticed our regular visitors debating liberal vs. conservative ideas. Some of these discussions have been quite interesting and heated. We really appreciate that because we love discussing ideas. Hey, that’s what the site is for, right? So, this thread is especially for stephanie and Draco to convince us. Enjoy…
Let Teresa Speak!
Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak, Let Teresa Speak!
Who’s REALLY To Blame For The Vaccine Shortage
This is long, but very good reading.
by William Tucker
JOHN KERRY wasted no time jumping on President George Bush about the unexpected shortage in flu vaccines this year. Why wasn’t Bush paying attention? He should have done things differently. And of course Kerry had a “plan” to solve the whole mess.
If Kerry thinks he can solve the flu vaccine problem, he need look no further than his own running mate, trial lawyer John Edwards. Vaccines are the one area of medicine where trial lawyers are almost completely responsible for the problem. No one can plausibly point a finger at insurance companies, drug companies, or doctors. Lawyers have won the vaccine game so completely that nobody wants to play.
Two weeks ago, British regulators suspended the license of Chiron Corp., the world’s second-leading flu vaccine supplier, for three months. Officials cited manufacturing problems at the factory in Liverpool, England, where Chiron makes its leading product, Fluvirin. Chiron was scheduled to supply 46 million of the 100 million doses to be administered in the United States this year. The other 54 million will come from Aventis Pasteur, a French company with headquarters in Strasbourg.
So why is it that 100 percent of our flu vaccines are now made by two companies in Europe? The answer is simple. Trial lawyers drove the American manufacturers out of the business.
In 1967 there were 26 companies making vaccines in the United States. Today there are only four that make any type of vaccine and none making flu vaccine. Wyeth was the last to fall, dropping flu shots
after 2002. For recently emerging illnesses such as Lyme disease, there is no commercial vaccine, even though one has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
All this is the result of a legal concept called “liability without fault” that emerged from the hothouse atmosphere of the law schools in the 1960s and became the law of the land. Under the old “negligence” regime, you had to prove a product manufacturer had done something wrong in order to hold it liable for damages. Under liability without fault, on the other hand, the manufacturer can be held responsible for harm from its products, whether blameworthy or not. Add to that the jackpot awards that come from pain-and-suffering and punitive damages, and you have a legal climate that no manufacturer wants to risk.
In theory, prices might have been jacked up enough to make vaccine production profitable even with the lawsuit risk, but federal intervention made vaccines a low-margin business. Before 1993, manufacturers sold vaccines to doctors, doctors prescribed them to patients, and there was some markup. Then Congress adopted the Vaccine for Children Act, which made the government a monopsony buyer. The feds now purchase over half of all vaccines at a low fixed price and distribute them to doctors. This has essentially finished off the private market.
As recently as 1980, 18 American companies made eight different vaccines for various childhood diseases. Today, four companies–GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, Merck, and Wyeth–make 12 vaccines. Of the 12, seven are made by only one company and only one is made by more than two. “There are constant shortages,” says Dr. Paul Offit, head of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “With only one supplier for so many vaccines, the whole system is fragile. When even the smallest thing goes wrong, children miss their vaccinations.”
The intersection between mass vaccinations and the tort system was bound to be messy. When you vaccinate enough people, someone, somewhere, is going to have a bad reaction. You could give a glass of milk to 100 million people and a few would inevitably get violently sick from it. With vaccines, there will be allergic reactions and a tiny but predictable percentage of people will suffer some kind of permanent damage or even die. Because of liability without fault and the generosity of the tort system, the result is huge damage awards.
The first instance of this came in 1955 with polio vaccinations. Cutter Laboratories, the California company that now distributes Cutter’s Insect Repellent, made an early batch of vaccines, some of which had live viruses in them. Almost all the children in Idaho were administered the vaccine and several dozen contracted polio. In 1957, the parents of Anne Gottsdanker, an 8-year-old girl whose legs had become paralyzed, sued Cutter, with famed personal injury lawyer Melvin Belli representing them.
The jury found Cutter’s actions were not negligent–the orders had been rushed, standards had not been clear, and safety precautions were still rudimentary at the time. But, using the new doctrine of liability without fault, the jury held Cutter accountable anyway and awarded $147,300. “That decision made Ralph Nader possible,” Belli later claimed.
“It was a turning point,” says Dr. Offit, whose book The Cutter Incident will be published next year. “Because of the Cutter decision, vaccines became one of the first medical products to
be eliminated by lawsuits.”
That this would be the outcome wasn’t immediately clear. Soon after the trial, the Yale Law Journal published an article arguing that insurance against adverse reactions was the solution. The public wouldn’t buy policies because it would be too complicated and expensive, but vaccine makers could. Insurance would cover the cost of bad outcomes and the manufacturers would pass these costs on to their customers. Those few who were harmed by a vaccine would be covered by those who benefited. Everything would work out. Unfortunately, this thesis failed to anticipate how high damage awards would go.
WHEN AN UNUSUAL EPIDEMIC occurred at Fort Dix, N.J., in 1976, for example, the federal government decided to vaccinate the whole country against the new “swine flu.” To the astonishment of Congress, the insurance companies refused to participate. Senator Ted Kennedy charged “cupidity” and “lack of social obligation.” The Congressional Budget Office predicted that with 45 million Americans inoculated, there would be 4,500 injury claims and 90 damage awards, totaling $2 million. Congress decided to provide the insurance.
As Peter Huber recounts in his book Liability, the CBO’s first estimate proved uncannily accurate. A total of 4,169 damage claims were filed. However, not 90 but more than 700 suits were successful and the total bill to Congress came to over $100 million, 50 times what the CBO had predicted. The insurance companies knew their business well.
Adding to the problem are the predictable panics about vaccines that spread among parents and are abetted by trial lawyers. In 1974, a British researcher published a paper claiming that the vaccine for pertussis (whooping cough) had caused seizures in 36 children, leading to 22 cases of epilepsy or mental retardation. Subsequent studies proved the claim to be false, but in the meantime Japan canceled inoculations, resulting in 113 preventable whooping cough deaths. In the United States, 800 pertussis vaccine lawsuits asking $21 million in damages were filed over the next decade. The cost of a vaccination went from 21 cents to $11.
Every American drug company dropped pertussis vaccine except Lederle Laboratories. In 1980, Lederle lost a liability suit for the paralysis of a three-month-old infant–even though there was almost no evidence implicating the vaccine. Lederle’s damages were $1.1 million, more than half its gross revenues from sale of the vaccine for that entire year.
In recent years, the most prevalent anti-vaccine rumor has held that Thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in vaccines from the 1930s until just recently, is behind an “epidemic of autism.” Once again, scientific studies have disproved the allegation, but hundreds of parents are filing suit, and trial lawyers continue to troll for clients.
Congress tried to stave off liability problems with the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986. The program functions almost as an ideal “medical court,” with panels of scientists, virologists, and statisticians reviewing each complaint and rewarding those that seem legitimate. Unfortunately, the program allows plaintiffs to opt out of the system. Trial lawyers continually bypass it and elect to go to trial–particularly for cases where the review looks unpromising. With Thimerosal, lawyers have argued that the law does not apply because mercury was an additive, not the actual vaccine. The result is jackpot awards and very little protection for the vaccine companies. In 1998, the FDA approved a vaccine for Lyme disease, which strikes 15,000 people a year. GlaxoSmithKline manufactured it for three years but quit when rumors began circulating that the vaccine caused arthritis.
All this has made the flu an epidemic waiting to happen. Each year flu viruses circle the globe, moving into Asia in the spring and summer and back to North America in the winter. Surface proteins change along the way so that the previous year’s vaccine doesn’t work against the following year’s variation.
Each year in February, the Centers for Disease Control meets with the vaccine-makers–all two of them–and decides which strain of the virus to anticipate for next year. Then they both make the same vaccine. Last year the committee bet on the Panama strain, but a rogue “Fujian” strain suddenly emerged as a surprise invader. A mini-epidemic resulted and 93 children died, only two of them properly vaccinated.
With several companies competing in the field, as was once the case, somebody would have been more likely to produce a dark horse vaccine. If that rogue strain emerged, the dissenting company would hit the jackpot, and there would be ample supplies of an effective vaccine, at least for those most at risk. In the “planned economy” of the CDC, however, there is no back-up for an unexpected turn of events. This year there isn’t even a front line.
Are trial lawyers ready to accept responsibility for their starring role in creating this health hazard? Don’t hold your breath. “This is just the typical garbage and propaganda from the drug manufacturers,” says Carlton Carl, spokesman for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. “There’s absolutely no disincentive for making vaccines. American companies don’t do it for the same reason they’re sending jobs overseas–because it increases their profits.”
Whether doctors are quitting the profession because of an out-of-control tort system, whether malpractice premiums are the cause of health care increases–such hardy perennials of the litigation debate are still a subject of lively controversy. But with vaccines there is no argument. Trial lawyers have all but ruined the market. Yet they are still unwilling to take responsibility.
William Tucker is a fellow at the Discovery Institute. His book on trial lawyers, Civil Lynchings, will be published next year.
What About Liberals?
“The trouble with our liberal friends
is not that they’re ignorant:
It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
- Ronald Reagan
