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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (540759)	2/15/2004 5:50:35 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

ClashPoint: The Arrogant Excretions of the Media Elite Doug Giles (archive) URL:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Giles20040207.shtml February 7, 2004 \| Print \| Send If you’re a conservative; if you drive a sperm whale size SUV; if you voted for George W. Bush in the last election; and if you supported the war in Iraq … then, according to the media elite, you’re Beavis. If you go to a Bible believing church on a regular basis; if you argue for the traditional family; if you live in a rural environment (especially) in the south; and if you fly the American flag … then, according to the media elite, you make Jethro Bodine look like a member of MENSA. If you own a gun; if you believe we should bolster our national defense; if you believe in the goodness of America and its founding principles; and if you think we should fight back when attacked … then, according to the media elite, you’re still in a Darwinian holding pattern. If you believe in limited government; if you argue that lower taxes spur economic growth; if you want our borders protected; and if you are a white man ... then, according to the media elite, you are the source of all that is wrong with America. That’s right: according to the media elite and their smarmy Thurston Howell, III’s, point of view, those of us who make up the core of traditional American values are woefully naïve bores. The average working hard, playing hard, salt-of-the-earth American is despicable to the pompous, wannabe-Euro-socialist-talking-heads that carp, fart and blather anti-American sentiments at us via the CBS, ABC, NBC and CNN nightly news. And you know what? Good, old Americans like us have had enough, and we are decisively turning them off en masse, for their unfair and unbalanced, blindingly liberal reporting and their condescension towards those of us who dare to differ. America is sick of the ridiculous, oh-so-obvious, Matt Lauer-like hard ball played when liberal journalists go toe-to-toe with a conservative, not budging an inch and always giving them that “Tsk-tsk, you’re guilty ‘til proven innocent” look on whatever stance the conservative takes on whichever issue. In the meantime, they preen, praise and pamper every liberal from Hillary Clinton to Ted Kennedy, and everyone in between. Bad conservative … BAD, BAD conservative for having a point of view other than the one that’s in agreement with those of Katie, Matt, Dan, Leslie and Aaron. Their biased bunk is more obvious than Janet Reno subbing in an all boy Japanese middle school wearing a day glow unitard. KY jelly is less transparent than Dan Rather’s ideological foundations. It’s no wonder the majority of newscasters (and I use that word loosely) are severely bent to the left. The top journalism schools from which the major broadcasting companies draw their “talent”, make David Koresh, Adolph Hitler and Jim Jones roll over in their graves with envy vis-à-vis their brainwashing abilities. Sure, these universities spit out a diverse group of professionals from various cultures, but ideologically speaking, they couldn’t be more inbred than the kid on the front porch picking a banjo in the movie Deliverance. My ClashPoint is this: Mr. and Ms. Media Elite, we don’t like you anymore. We don’t like to be told what to drive, how to vote, whom to worship or not worship. We don’t like to feel guilty and naughty if we dissent with your values. We don’t want to be like they are in Europe. That’s why we left. We don’t like to switch on TV and hear everything that we value somehow put down and vilified. We don’t like you trying to make us feel stupid because we believe in God, freedom, family and the flag. That’s why we’re taking our remote control and turning you off. Because, you see, you’re way off. Frankly, we would rather watch the paint-drying channel or the grass-growing marathon than listen to your too obviously imbalanced, liberal, psycho-political, brainwashing blather. And don’t think for one second it’s because we can’t handle the weight of your philosophic constructs – or destructs. It seems you’re not convertible. Therefore, we’ll just shake the dust off our TV clicker and move on down the road, to that which really is fair and balanced. Doug Giles pastors a church in Miami and hosts two award winning radio programs. His latest book, “Ruling in Babylon”, is available via Amazon.com. You can e-mail him at doug@clashradio.com, or visit the www.clashradio.com website. ©2003 Doug Giles

To: calgal who wrote (540759)	2/15/2004 5:50:44 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

BUSINESS WORLD Democratic Enemies List Kerry's simple-minded populism shows his is a camaign about nothing. BY HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR. Saturday, February 7, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST If this column sounds like one four years ago, that's because Democrats are running against their usual list of "enemy" industries. The party's standard trope is that you're being denied things you need and deserve because enemies are keeping them from you, cheap drugs being today's case in point. Let's make sense of the industry once more for a Democratic presidential cadre now reaching a high pitch of populist dudgeon. There's a reason analysts, investors and pharmaceutical reps talk about a "pipeline." In one end goes a bunch of money, and out comes a dribble of products years later. The metaphor is also useful in understanding drug pricing. Whatever comes out the end, whether it's nose drops or a chemotherapy drug, is priced at whatever level will allow its maximum contribution to recouping all the money that went into the front end of the pipe. Abbott Labs demonstrated this effect when it recently raised the price of its aging AIDS drug, Norvir, by 400%. Activist groups were outraged, never mind that Abbott froze the old price in place for charity groups and continues to make the drug available at cost in developing countries. Abbott was accused of "greed." But wait? Wasn't it already stipulated that drug companies were maximally greedy? How could a change in Abbott's greed state account for a change in pricing strategy? In fact, Abbott was recently saluted by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation for making cheap drugs available in Africa. But Norvir, introduced in 1996, is no longer a drug of choice. Instead it's been relegated to a "booster" role in cocktail therapies consisting of new, higher-priced drugs from rival manufacturers (though much of the therapeutic benefit actually comes from combining their pricey products with cheap Norvir). Abbott saw other drug makers generating large revenues from its drug and is attempting to tilt more of the revenue flow from treating AIDS back to itself. Other companies will respond by cutting their own prices a bit to maintain market share and maximize their own revenues. Which goes to show what a competitive market AIDS drugs are, with 12 essential medicines now on the World Health Organization list. Drug companies are in the business of funding large R&D establishments, which typically account for a bigger share of total costs than manufacturing and distribution. That's why companies can charge high prices to rich, insured Westerners and next to nothing to poor Africans--because any price that's even a penny above current manufacturing cost produces at least some revenue to support the research bill. Now we come to the politics. It's tempting to say in these circumstances, "Hey, we can mandate lower prices for Medicare, treating American retirees the way we treat AIDS sufferers in Africa, because drug companies will keep making and selling drugs even at a much lower price as long as it's higher than current manufacturing costs." That's right, and the price of drug company stocks will crash instantly, and no more capital will be available to research new products. This is not really hard to understand, and certainly our Ivy League-educated Democratic presidential candidates can understand it. Were any of them to land in office, you can bet their threats against the drug industry would be quickly filed away in a circular keeping place until the next election. President Kerry wouldn't want to bear the political cost of its collapsing stock values, massive layoffs and the media reporting the folding up of research into cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. If this were only Mr. Kerry's problem we might wonder about the IQ behind his campaign rhetoric. Instead we are forced to wonder about the contempt nearly the whole Democratic field seems to feel for the Democratic base. No demagogue, left or right, fails to present himself as champion of the great, victimized majority against some tiny and exploitive elite. This argument is convenient for two reasons. Difficult issues like health-care financing, involving real tensions between hard-to-reconcile goals, can be reduced to utmost simplicity: On one side are the legitimate claims of voters who want cheaper drugs or whatever; on the other are the illegitimate claims of those who "stand in the way." Populist claptrap serves another purpose, visible on the very persons of the candidates: They swell with confidence and invulnerability when posing as defenders of the "little guy" rather than as champions of the party's own array of special interests and voting blocs (which is what they are). The force really at work is fear--fear on the part of Democratic leaders that they have nothing to offer; fear that their party's captivity by groups tied to existing programs forecloses any chance of innovative thinking. Notice that the party did not even wait for eight years of unrivaled Clinton prosperity to expire before Al Gore, in a panic, reverted to what a Washington Post editorial called "primitive business bashing" as a substitute for saying what some Democratic lobby group somewhere wouldn't like. Notice what a miserable disappointment even Howard Dean has been in this regard. Notice, too, the wonder of John Kerry, an asterisk six weeks ago, who reached his present eminence based on the repetition of meaningless phrases: "I know something about aircraft carriers for real." "Bring it on." "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." There is, literally, nothing else to the Kerry campaign. He's the default option of Democratic voters after the amazing rise and fall of Howard Dean, with the mother of all buyer's remorse coming down the pike about a minute or two behind. That's too bad but as a party they asked for it--and will keep doing so until they stop relying on the mindless naming of "villains" in place of dealing honestly with the voters whom they claim to represent. Mr. Jenkins is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal on Wednesdays. He is also editor of OpinionJournal's Political Diary, a new premium e-mail service. Click here for subscription information and sample columns.