• My second favorite news item yesterday

    **Author’s note: if you don’t care for politics or the politics of the author, don’t read this entry (or the next one either).

    The assault weapons ban, passed in 1994 (under a Democratic legislature and President), is expiring this year. A flurry of lobbyists, law enforcement professionals, and the Brady family, descended upon Washington to urge lawmakers to extend the bill. The news out of Washington was that congressional leaders (re: the Republicans) had no intention of bringing the bill up for a vote; and that the President (Dubya) had no intention of asking them to do so either. Why? Tom Delay said that he would not push to bring it to a vote because it would not have the votes to pass. Other Republican leaders insisted that the existing bill was ineffective, and therefore should not be extended. They did not stand at the podium and proclaim their regret that an extension would not pass. They did not suggest ways to make the bill more effective either, and I think that is instructive – but I’ll let you connect the dots.

    A commentator suggested that congressional leadership was not eager to push the bill, fearing the assault weapons ban led to the Democrats ceding control of the legislature in the ’94 mid term election. Apparently the Clinton universal health care fiasco and the ’94 tax hike had nothing to do with that.

    In any case, it looks like we’ve got the all clear to lock and load!

  • Why we need to be protected from ourselves, revisited

    My favorite news item yesterday was a report that the manufacturers of anti-depressants had research findings which suggested their product could increase suicidal thoughts and actions in children, but kept it to themselves in order to make their product more marketable. The news story (N.P.R. – 9/8/2004) claimed that it was “well known” that drug companies did not share all of their research results during the FDA approval and subsequent marketing of their drugs. If certain results were deemed “inconvenient” then they were buried.

    I’m going to repeat that allegation one more time, because I think it is just swell: the makers of anti depressants had their own research findings which suggested their product made the symptoms of depression worse, and lead to an INCREASE in the incidence of suicide in children; yet they kept it to themselves because it would harm the bottom line.

    I would like to suggest that, if these allegations are true, it makes a pretty strong case for the regulation of certain industries.

  • Digging for gold in all the wrong places

    Today I went back to the dentist, and I’m here to tell you that it was the worst dental experience of my life. In order to make such a strong statement; surely I must have had extensive work done? Root canal, gum surgery, multiple wisdom tooth extractions? No, it was just a routine cleaning.

    Back in the day, I recall dental professionals using a simple metal pick to remove build up along the gum line. Apparently, progress in the dental arts often involves more power – like some bizarre real world episode of Home Improvement. If you can imagine Tim Allen as a dental hygienist, then you can imagine what today’s cleaning was like. Yes, this time the metal pick was trailing a cord – the first sign of danger. By the time the hygienist was done I was quite sore. Sore gums, sore shoulders, sore neck, sore fingers – you get the picture. It was the kind of muscle fatigue you gain from every muscle in your body remaining in a constant state of contraction for twenty agonizing minutes. But I’ve got to give that hygienist some credit, not once did she ask me to relax. Now there’s someone who really enjoys her work.

    Dear lord! Was that woman looking for metal deposits? I’m sure she was finding plenty of iron, but I hear it’s a bitch to extract from hemoglobin. Maybe she was having a flashback from her harrowing days on an oil platform? I would have gladly given her any information she wanted, if only she would have asked me a question.

    The hygienist greeted me with a lecture about the perils of periodontal disease. Who would have guessed she was going to spend the next twenty minutes trying to create the symptoms by hand?