FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog

A Warm Welcome to new Bear Flag League Member:

Mayor Sam’s Sister City - Home of Los Angeles Politics

Mayor Sam and Chief Parker had previously welcomed Flap to the blogosphere when I was first stating out and taught me about attribution.

Welcome aboard and as you say it …..Blog Away Dum Dums

Public trust in newspapers and television news continued to decline in Gallup’s annual survey of “public confidence in major institutions” in the United States, reaching an all-time low this year.

Why are we then so surprised when we read stories like:

New York Times: Will Cut 190 Jobs

LA Times: Enters the Blogosphere

Tribune Co. to Show Circulation Losses; ‘L.A. Times’ Down More than 5.5%

Those having a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers dipped from 30% to 28% in one year, the same total for television. The previous low for newspapers was 29% in 1994. Since 2000, confidence in newspapers has declined from 37% to 28%, and TV from 36% to 28%, according to the poll.

Looking at the newspaper numbers, of those surveyed, 24% say they have “very little” confidence in them, while 1% said “none.” By far the highest number, 46%, said “some,” with 28% expressing strong confidence.

I wonder when the blogosphere will be included in the survey?

When it comes to public approval, President Bush and Congress are playing “how low can you go.” Bush’s approval mark is 43 percent, while Congress checks in at 31 percent, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found. Both are the lowest levels yet for the survey, started in December 2003.

About one-third of adults, 35 percent, said they think the country is headed in the right direction, while 43 percent said they approve of the job being done by Bush. Just 41 percent say they support his handling of the war, also a low-water mark.

“There’s a bad mood in the country, people are out of sorts,” said presidential scholar and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Charles Jones, who lives near Charlottesville, Va. “Iraq news is daily bad news. The election in Iraq helped some, and the formation of the government helped some, but dead bodies trump the more positive news.”

The President has lost the momentum of the November 2004 elections.

Some recommendations from Flap:

1. Conclude the Iraq War and start bringing home the troops

2.Secure the USA’s southern border, and enforce the immigration laws. Forget about any amnesty or Guest Worker program

3.Forget about privitization of social security and in fact forget about reforming the system, especially any increase in payroll taxes or cuts in benefits. Let the next President do it.

4.Cut Federal spending and bring the budget more into balance

5. Stick to the 4 above and win some more seats in the Congress in 2006.

Costco the low cost and high volume discount warehouse store is adding health insurance to its shelves:

In a pilot program to be launched next month in Southern California, Costco will offer family and individual coverage to its customers who pay $100 a year for “executive” membership, company officials said. The insurance is aimed at people such as contractors, waiters and students who are self-employed or cannot sign up for plans at work.

Although other discount stores such as Wal-Mart and Target have begun offering limited health services in their stores, Costco says it will be the first to offer insurance to members. About 18 million households nationally belong to Costco, including 3.4 million who pay for executive membership.

Company officials would not quote premiums but said the insurance would be 5% to 20% cheaper than policies individuals could buy on their own. Costco expects to offer coverage statewide by the end of the year and may eventually make it available to regular members, said Dellanie Fragnoli, assistant vice president of insurance services at Issaquah, Wash.-based Costco.

Health Insurance first and then out patient helath services and dentistry will follow - or at least be attempted.

Maybe those rumours about Cerec restorations at Costco were not hyperbole.

When Howard Dean was chosen to head their party, Democrats looked forward to the benefits of his bristling energy and zest for political combat.

But at a private meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill, a number of worried Senate Democrats warned Dean that he had been going overboard and needed to choose his words more carefully.

The former Vermont governor and unsuccessful presidential candidate recently referred to the GOP as “pretty much a white, Christian party” and declared that a lot of Republicans have “never made an honest living in their lives.”

Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) said that at the Capitol Hill meeting, “there couldn’t be any doubt that there was some concern, even by Dean himself,” about how his comments had been received.

Also Thursday, two Democrats seen as rising stars — Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee and Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner — made a point of distancing themselves from Dean’s remarks.

Ford, who plans a Senate run next year, said on the Don Imus radio show that if Dean could not “temper his comments, it may get to the point where the party may need to look elsewhere for leadership, because he does not speak for me.”

Ford later told The Times that Dean was “leading us in a direction that makes it difficult to win…. His leadership right now is not serving any of us very well.”

Warner, who has been mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said Dean was using “not the kind of tone that I would use, not the kind of tone a lot of the Democratic governors in mostly Republican states are using to get elected or to govern.” Warner made his comments at a luncheon at The Times’ Washington bureau.

If these divisive and bigoted comments had been made by the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, there would already be calls for a resignation and a public apology from the national party committee members.

But, in the MSM, the best they can do is write “sad sister” pieces bemoaning that a few rising Democrat stars may have a tough time winning an election.

Other Democrats were quoted distancing themselves from Dean’s conduct:

Every single one of us has stuck our foot in our mouths at one point in our public careers, and we’ve paid for it the next day,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said that although she didn’t agree with Dean’s recent comments, she considered him an effective party chairman.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on her way into the Capitol Hill meeting with Dean that he “ought to stick to organization, raising funds and supporting Democrats, rather than creating friction and splitting the party.” She added that she would advise Dean to “cool it.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), up for reelection next year, said that he cautioned Dean “not to get caught up in the Washington game of political polarization.”

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said he didn’t think Dean’s comments were helpful to the party. But he noted, as did a number of other Democratic senators, that Dean was still new to his job as chairman and had been accustomed to speaking his mind as a governor and presidential candidate.

“This is a learning process,” he said. If Dean were to continue to make the sort of comments he has made recently, Biden said, “he might find himself in a real difficult situation. But I think you’ll see him be a little more careful in how he phrases things. Do I think this has caused long-term damage for the Democratic Party? No. If it becomes the steady diet for the next three years? Yeah.”

This entire FLAP has the Democrats on the defensive and certainly has thrown them “off message”.

The Loose Cannon, Howard Dean, will not be around past Labor Day.

Update #1

Scrappleface has this humorous take on the situation.

Update #2

Captain Ed and Michelle Malkin have their takes on yesterday’s meeting.

The New York Times (free registration required) has an investigative piece about Propulsid, a once popular drug used for gastric reflux disease, primarily in children:

Dozens had died and more than 100 patients had suffered serious heart problems by March 1998 after taking Propulsid, a popular medicine for heartburn. Infants, given the drug to treat acid reflux, seemed particularly at risk. Federal officials told Propulsid’s manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, that the drug might have to be banned for children, or even withdrawn altogether. Instead, the government and the company negotiated new warnings for the drug’s label - though not nearly as tough as regulators had wanted.

Propulsid had a good year anyway. Sales continued to surpass $1 billion. Johnson & Johnson continued to underwrite efforts that promoted Propulsid’s use in children. A survey that year found that about 20 percent of babies in neonatal intensive care units were being given the drug.

Two years later, as reports of heart injuries and deaths mounted, Johnson & Johnson continued defending the safety of Propulsid, but then pulled it from the market before a government hearing threatened to draw attention to the drug’s long, largely hidden, record of trouble.

And who was FDA Commissioner during the period in question? David A. Kessler, M.D.

Under Dr. Kessler’s leadership, the FDA took a number of steps to become more consumer-oriented. The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (1994) was passed in order to make food labels more useful to the consumer. The FDA also was able to cut the length of the drug approval process nearly in half. In addition, Dr. Kessler oversaw the ban of silicone breast implants and took on the tobacco industry in order to tighten regulation.

What Propulsid’s Label Said

And the Lefties complain abut Republican appointees being too close to industy or the companies which they regulate.

These problems happened all within the Clinton Administration.

Of course, this is not mentioned in the piece.