Sunday, July 30, 2006

Now I'm No Marketing Guru........

........so far be it for me to question the judgment of you business types, but Vandazole vaginal gel?.......um....is it really a winning sales strategy to pick a name for your intimate care product that many people will associate with:

1. One who willfully or maliciously defaces or destroys public or private property.

2. A member of a Germanic people that overran Gaul, Spain, and northern Africa in the fourth and fifth centuries a.d. and sacked Rome in 455. (definition from dictionary.com)

Now I admit, I don't have a vagina, but I do have a penis, and there's no way I would want my penis vandalized. Therefore I would be highly unlikely to ever buy something called, say, Vandalactic condoms, but maybe that's just me.

Then there's the slogan, straight from the Vandazole web site:

Balance her flora...with her budget in mind.

Did they pay someone to come up with that? Fortunately for Upsher-Smith, insurance company forced substitution policies will more than likely save them from their own marketing ineptitude.

Disclaimer: No vaginas or penises were vandalized in the creation of this blog post.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Letters, Oh We Get Letters....

ALTERNATE POST TITLE:

People Can Get A Little Testy When You Point Out That They Have A Small Penis.


Someone who could only be a Lucentis sales rep had this to say about my recent post about how Genentech corporation is draining every last dollar they can from people who don't want to go blind:

Lucentis is what is called a small molecule. Not only does it stop the blood vessels from expanding this bliding the patient it actually repairs the eye restoring normal sight. Avastin only halts blindness it does not repair the eye. Get your facts straight dummy.

As I'm sure you can understand, these words simply devastated me. I mean, to be exposed as a dummy, how humiliating. I suppose I should probably go kill myself now.

Sarah Boseley should probably kill herself too. She's the health editor for the UK Guardian who wrote the article I linked to in my original post. She must be a really big dummy, because she talked to people at Genentech, who I'm sure would have made the point immediately to someone writing a story for a major international newspaper that Lucentis is a superior product over Avastin. Instead, all that is in the story is this:

Genentech said its main concern over the use of Avastin to treat eye conditions was patient safety.

Oh, and Dr. Philip Rosenfeld. I suppose he should kill himself for being a dummy. He's such a big dummy he studied Avastin, where he and his colleagues found, in an article published in the medical journal Ophthalmology titled Systemic bevacizumab (Avastin) therapy for neovascular age-related macular degeneration twelve-week results of an uncontrolled open-label clinical study. that:

By 12 weeks,the median and mean central retinal thickness measurements decreased by 157 microm (P = 0.008) and 177 microm (P = 0.001), respectively.


Translation, AVASTIN ACTUALLY REPAIRED THE EYE.

Hmmmmm....a medical journal, one of the world's most respected newspapers, and a medical doctor on one side, and an anonymous Internet troll on the other. You don't have to be a dummy to figure this out.

The only thing worse than making a living off ripping off sick people is making a living ripping off sick people while insisting you aren't. Just admit what you are Genentech. Honesty is free, is that why you abhor it so much?

You can read Dr. Rosenfeld's study here.

You can read the Guardian article here.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Inept Bureaucracy Or American Arrogance? I Report, You Decide.

Yesterday I covered a shift at a store other than where I usually work. The place is busier than my normal pill room, meaning there is more than one pharmacist on duty at a time. This is a good thing for 2 reasons. 1) It gives me a chance to pretend to be busy when a customer comes up to the counter demanding to know why there isn't any organic sunscreen (really happened -she absolutely had to talk to a pharmacist about this.) and 2) It means there's an extra person to shoot the bull with during lulls in the pill counting action.

So I'm taking advantage of option number 2, making idle chitchat with the other pharmacist, who is from another country, about the hoops one has to jump through to get a license in the US. "Well at least you didn't have to take the English equivalency test" I say, foolishly assuming that someone born and raised in ENGLAND would have a working knowledge of ENGLISH.

"Oh but I did" was the reply "and I'm happy to say I did quite well."

As I would be willing to bet do most subjects of Queen.

A Tribute To Whoo Guy

If you saw the movie Walk The Line, you'll remember the scene of Johnny Cash's concert inside Folsom prison. You may or may not know that that concert actually happened, was recorded live and is available from your favorite music retailer. It was one of my favorite albums back when the hipster doofuses that worship him today thought a Johnny Cash was some sort of coupon book that you got at the grocery store. If you don't have a copy you should buy one now. When you do, you'll hear after Cash sings on the first track that he "shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" one of the audience members (inmates) lets out a very distinctive, and very loud, WHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! The line affected this man on a very deep, personal, level, and it shows.

I often wonder what happened to whoo guy. I'd like to think that after his release from Folsom, he formed a country and western band and spent many happy years touring off the beaten path waystations with a unique musical art that while it never made him rich, satisfied his creative soul and inspired others to express themselves using their artistic gifts.

More than likely though whoo guy took a shank in some vital organ and died. He was definitely happy during his whoo moment though, and I guess that's what the concert was all about.

I wonder if I'll leave this post on the blog tomorrow when I'm sober. Probably not, so you should enjoy it while you can.


Update: Though the wonder of internet magic, you can listen to whoo guy yourself. Click here to share this magical moment in music history.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Venereal Disease, One Of The Little Known Dangers Of Sleeping In

At least according to one of my customers, who couldn't understand why he felt just fine, but was nonetheless at my counter with an antibiotic prescription for himself and his rather upset girlfriend.

"We had sex" starts off his defense. "but then she slept for 3 days and didn't take a shower or nothin, all that time with me inside her, that was probably what made the infection don't you think?"

There's not enough money in the world to do this job sometimes.

"Did you talk this over with your doctor when he wrote the prescription?" I ask.

"Yeah, he told me no, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened. Don'tcha think?"

This is the customer type I call the "validation-seeker" They know exactly what is going on with their body and are simply looking for someone with a white coat to recognize the scope of their vast health care knowledge, acquired without all the time consuming years of college, book reading, or in some cases, even bothering to do a google search. This man was an extreme example, but most pharmacists will deal with a validation seeker at least once a day.

I kindly explained to the nice customer that neither length of sleep or frequency of showering will have any effect on acquiring this particular type of infection. The happy couple, an unconvinced man and an increasingly angry woman, then left the store, probably to seek a third opinion from their hairdresser.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

This Story Makes No Sense, Until My Theory Explains It All

A highly unusual thing happened today. For as long as I can remember I have lived my life secure in the knowledge that I know everything, but as I waded through a story in the New York Times, I was suddenly confronted with the possibility that I could not come up with any explanation for something that happened. Could it be that I am not the smartest person on earth? Could the tale of Dr. Peter Gleason be what exposes me to the world as suffering from a case of cluelessness? Terror and fear gripped me as I waded deeper and deeper into the story, not out of concern for Dr Gleason mind you, who is undoubtedly getting screwed, but for me, as my massive brainpower was unable to come up for a reason for the screwing.

It all starts out simply enough. It seems Dr. Gleason fell in love with a drug called Xyrem, used to treat cataplexy, a form of narcolepsy that causes temporary paralysis. The doctor decided that Xyrem was helpful for other things as well, such as insomnia and depression, so he started writing prescriptions "off label" for those conditions. Nothing unusual there. Doctors do it all the time, it's called practicing medicine.

Next the manufacturer notices the high number of prescriptions coming from Dr. Gleason, and asks if he would be interested in giving talks to other docs about how wonderful Xyrem is, for a fee. According to the Times:

“I started doing those, and I started getting requested a lot,” Dr. Gleason said. He received $450 to visit a doctor in the office, $750 for speaking at a luncheon and $1,500 for a dinner speech. He made as much as $3,000 a day, he said.

Although he continued to see some patients, the Xyrem talks gradually became his primary source of income.


So now he's a drug industry whore. Maybe a bit slimy, but very very low on the scale of drug company evilness. Especially considering he was a doctor talking about what he actually did in his medical practice. Here's where the weirdness starts. back to the Times:

In the early afternoon of Monday, March 6, half a dozen men in suits surrounded Dr. Gleason, at a train station on Long Island and handcuffed him.

“I said, ‘Well, this is a gag,’ ” Dr. Gleason recalled in a recent interview. “They said, ‘No, this isn’t.’ ”

Dr. Gleason, 53, was taken aback because he was arrested, and later charged, for doing something that has become common among doctors: promoting a drug for purposes other than those approved by the federal government.


Arrested for telling other doctors how he practiced medicine. WTF? What terrified me more than the obvious assault on the first amendment was my inability to come up for a reason as to why on earth the feds would decide it was worthwhile to use their resources to bust a small time doctor promoting a small time drug. The unfamiliar sensation of bafflement swirled through my brain until I saw these words:

In 2000, after highly publicized cases in which young women died or were raped after GHB was slipped into their drinks, Congress designated the drug a Schedule I controlled substance, in the same class as heroin.

What a relief. The story goes on:

In 2002, after Orphan presented clinical trial data showing GHB’s effectiveness against cataplexy, the F.D.A. approved the drug, under the brand name Xyrem, as a cataplexy treatment. In 2005, the agency approved Xyrem for the treatment of all forms of narcolepsy.

To help persuade the F.D.A. to approve Xyrem, Orphan Medical agreed to make the drug available only from a single pharmacy in Missouri, which ships it to patients nationally. No other prescription drug, even other Schedule III medicines, is so tightly controlled.


In case your brain didn't click like mine did when I saw that paragraph, I'll tell you what the Times doesn't. Dr. Gleason's crime was running smack dab against the "War On Drugs." The federal government was dragged kicking and screaming into approving this med, and remains unhappy about it to this day. Yes, the drug industry has Congress and the executive branch by the nads most of the time, but nothing, nothing mind you, will ever get in the way of the manufacturing of fear by those in power, as the fear they spread is what keeps them there. The war on drugs is integral to keeping us afraid. Fear drugs. Fear Xyrem. My world is back to normal.

You can read the whole story here

Friday, July 21, 2006

A Front Row Seat To A Crystal Meth Meltdown.

The main advantage to working for a large, impersonal chain is the professional freedom it allows. This may seem counterintuitive, but where else would I be free to give crappy, impersonal service when and where I deem it necessary? In the anonymous world of big box retail, crappy service will get you a "meets expectations" from the general public at least 90% of the time. Coming in a close second on the advantage list is the fact that I have zero responsibility for running the store. Unlike the old days, when the drugstore owner/manager wanted the pharmacy a few feet above the rest of the store so they could keep an eye on what was going on, I happily toil away in the back concerned only about filling prescriptions in a way so that no one dies. I hire no one. I fire no one. I have little contact with any other employee other than my techs, and the lower my contact with people, the happier I am. I can still hear the store PA system though, and tonight that system broadcast the meltdown of one of those employees I know very little about.

It started off as simply annoying. An announcement every once in awhile that "I need an extra cashier....I have more than three people in line....so Bob or John could you come to the front to help me check and be an extra cashier?" Seemed like simple diarrhea of the mouth at first. Then comes "I need an extra cashier.....and I see you down the card aisle having too much fun" I can see the greeting cards from my happy little pill room, where there were two old people looking baffled as to why they had been outed over the PA. Then comes a report that she told a customer, a total stranger, that "I could use some alcohol, because it helps you see better, double vision you know."

Three randomly timed announcements of "Thank you for shopping at Wal Mart." The nearest Wal Mart is 20 miles away.

Next comes the manager in charge. And by "manager" I mean 22 year old kid working his way through college. He tells me that psycho cashier said a customer who didn't have an ID when carded was "driving without a license" and "we should have them arrested." When the manager said there was no need to start arresting our customers, psycho cashier said "I should bite you"

"You really need to send her home" I say. "This crossed the line into serious a long time ago."

"She's the only person I have after 8" was the reply.

In fairness there are other possibilities to explain the cashier's conduct besides crystal meth. It is possible that instead of taking a drug she wasn't supposed to take, the cashier didn't take a drug she WAS supposed to take. It was a busy night, so it's possible she went insane naturally. No matter what the specific cause though, she was evidently too vital to store operations tonight to lose, and meeting the service expectations of the general public around 80% of the time I'm sure.

If You're A Doctor Phoning In Your Own Blood Pressure Med.....

....why do you only give yourself 2 refills? Is the plan to give yourself enough to tide you over until you can make an appointment with yourself? Low grade stupidity can sometimes be the most annoying.....

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Corruption. It's A Dirty Word.

....and with good reason. Ever wonder why there are so many poor bastards who'll risk their life to try and get across the southern border of the United States from Mexico, a country with abundant natural resources, a climate custom made for tourism, and people with a work ethic unmatched on the planet? The "c" word has a lot to do with it. A few people in power who use that power to take care of the well connected at the expense of everyone else will rob a nation of it's true wealth far more effectively than an army of street-level criminals.

"Uh, OK drugnazi" some of you might be saying. "What's this got to do with me? Government corruption is what happens somewhere else, usually in places with people who's skin color is darker than mine." Not so fast there gringo. From today's New York Times we have this:

The pharmaceutical industry is beginning to reap a windfall from a surprisingly lucrative niche market: drugs for poor people.

The windfall, which by some estimates could be $2 billion or more this year, is a result of the transfer of millions of low-income people into the new Medicare Part D drug program that went into effect in January. Under that program, as it turns out, the prices paid by insurers, and eventually the taxpayer, for the medications given to those transferred are likely to be higher than what was paid under the federal-state Medicaid programs for the poor.


It's a little tough for your average schlep to follow, so I'll translate what's happened into English for you.

Back in the day, a person who was eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare had their drug bill taken care of by Medicaid, a program jointly run by individual states and the federal government. That was because there was no drug coverage under Medicare. Along comes the Medicare Part D plan in January, and now these same people's drug bills are the responsibility of Medicare and the federal government alone. Sounds simple enough.

Thing is, Medicaid programs by law have a "best price" provision. Meaning that drug companies automatically have to give states that purchase drugs for Medicaid the lowest price offered to other big insurers. Whoo hoo! everyone loves a bargain!

Except for the federal government that is. Not only is there no "best price" provision in Medicare Part D, the law SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITS the federal government from negotiating prices. You read that right. As the Times puts it:

Initially, the added costs will be paid by the insurers administering the new Medicare drug program. But when it comes time for the insurers to settle accounts with the government, the costs of the 6.5 million drugs for the transferees will end up being passed along to federal taxpayers

I don't think I have to explain what "costs passed along to federal taxpayers" means. Don't worry though, you're not the only one getting screwed. The people in the program now have to pay a co-pay for their meds, which were completely covered when they were the responsibility of Medicaid.

So to sum up, here are the net effects of your government in action:

1) Same drugs

2) Same people getting drugs

3) Taxpayers paying more for same people getting same drugs

4) Same people paying more for getting same drugs.

5) Pharmaceutical companies netting an estimated extra $2 billion for selling same drugs to same people.

I hope that those of you who've stuck with me so far are saying to yourselves, WHAT THE FUCK?? HOW IN GOD'S GREEN EARTH DOES SUCH AN INCREDIBLY INSANE IDEA BECOME LAW!!!??

Well, it's just a theory, but I think Dave Larson and Quin Dodd might have something to do with it. Mr. Larson was a health policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Bill First, the chief sponsor of the Medicare bill. Mr. Dodd is a former legislative director to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the fourth ranking Republican in the Senate. They now work for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America, lobbying for them in the, um, Senate, among other places. Not to put all the blame on these two. A third of all lobbyists employed by the industry are former federal government employees, including more than 15 former Senators and more than 60 former members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

A few people in power who use that power to take care of the well connected at the expense of everyone else. Sound familiar? I hope so, because you read those very words probably not more than 5 minutes ago. Larson, Dodd, and their ilk are robbing this country of it's true wealth just as surely as any corrupt dictator of the third world. Please do something to stop them before we become the poor bastards desperate to cross the northern border.

You can read the Times story here.

You can read more about the relationship between Big Pharma and what is supposed to be your government here and here.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Avastin. I Think It's A Latin Word Meaning "I'm A Greedy Drug Company Shithead With A Small Penis"

Sigh.

Back in April I wrote a post about a story of greed that I said at the time I hoped would be impossible to top. I'm saddened but not terribly surprised that it took only 3 months for the evil bastards at Genentech to decide that $100,000 a year for a chance to survive cancer wasn't enough. From the UK Guardian we have this:

A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market.

Ophthalmologists around the world, on their own initiative, are injecting tiny quantities of a colon cancer drug called Avastin into the eyes of patients with wet macular degeneration, a common condition of older age that can lead to severely impaired eyesight and blindness. They report remarkable success at very low cost because one phial can be split and used for dozens of patients.


Here's a neat game. Find the words in that quote that send every drug company executive into an uncontrolled fit of rage. Hint; the words are "at very low cost." You could also get credit for "cheaply and effectively"

If nothing else, the scum that are responsible for meeting the quarterly profit projections at Big Pharma are people of action. Seeing the threat posed to public health by an $18 cure for blindness, they immediately moved to correct the situation:

Genentech, the company that invented Avastin, does not want it used in this way. Instead it is applying to license a fragment of Avastin, called Lucentis, which is packaged in the tiny quantities suitable for eyes at a higher cost. Speculation in the US suggests it could cost £1,000 per dose instead of less than £10. The company says Lucentis is specifically designed for eyes, with modifications over Avastin, and has been through 10 years of testing to prove it is safe.

Unless Avastin is approved in the UK by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) it will not be universally available within the NHS. But because Genentech declines to apply for a licence for this use of Avastin, Nice cannot consider it. In spite of the growing drugs bill of the NHS, it will appraise, and probably approve, Lucentis next year.


So, 100 times more for basically putting a drug you already make, have already done all the necessary research and development for and that you ALREADY CHARGE CANCER PATIENTS $100,000 A YEAR FOR, and putting it into little eyedropper vials.

Sigh.

You know, my momma raised me to think it was wrong to wish harm on another human being, but I seriously hope that Arthur Levinson, Chairman and CEO of Genentech, goes blind. Then gets cancer. Then dies because he takes the wrong pill because he couldn't see what he was doing. Then gets peed on by a dog. I'm not sure what the dog has to do with it, but I think you get my point.

Read the whole story here.

This Isn't A Real Post.

It's more a response to someone who dropped a kind note into my mailbox. It's a shame that I can't post what they wrote here, as the letter pretty much confirms what I've known for awhile now, namely that I am the bomb and write a kick-ass blog, but the writer wished to remain anonymous, so they shall.

In all seriousness though, it is a bit humbling that something I started because I had too much free time and too much built up venom could end up adding something to someone's life. You may have picked up by now that I am far better at sarcasm and mockery than sincerity, but it was a nice letter. Thanks.

The anonymous letter writer also asked the best way to contact me, so I will tell them (and you) that any time you leave a comment anywhere on the blog it gets zapped straight to my e-mail box. Just mention that you don't want the comment published and it's as good as sending me a personal e-mail.

Now back to the freaks, the drug companies that value a dollar more than your life, and Republicans that um....value a dollar more than your life.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

The End Of My Trip; My Suitcase Whacks A Kid In The Nuts.

Ok, so obviously the Disney death as a final piece of performance art didn't work out. I got to my destination, watched some whales, scored some kick-ass vinyl (records, not bondage wear) , yadda yadda yadda....

Something happened at the airport after my arrival back home though, and I'm not sure if it's a sad commentary on group psychology or a sad comment on my sense of humor that I found it so damn hilarious. Here's the deal. I'm waiting in baggage claim for my suitcase to show up. Most of you probably know the setup, but for those of you that don't, imagine a giant conveyor belt in the shape of a circle, with a ramp coming up through the circle's center. The suitcases come up on the ramp, then get deposited on the conveyor belt to go round and round until the suitcase's owner picks it up. So, there I am at the conveyor belt, along with a couple hundred other people who all seem to think being 0.0001 millimeter closer to the belt than anyone else will save them at least half an hour getting out of the airport, and here comes my suitcase shooting up the ramp with such force that it almost tips over and falls off the circle. The big blue Travelpro manages to hang on though, albeit hanging over the edge.

An edge where people have crowded around as closely as they can remember. As I watch my suitcase make it's way around to me, I see it bump into person after person, one after the other, and even though every person is no more than 2 inches from the last person who just got goosed by my bag, every single one of them tries to act cool about the whole thing, like nothing happened, and not one person made a move to get out of the way. One kid was turned a little more towards the belt than everyone else and instead of getting bumped in the hips he took it right in the nads. He couldn't have been more than 15 years old and you could tell he was in a bit of pain. But again, he did his best to act like nothing had happened. A second of surprise than a rush to hide all feelings.

By the time my suitcase made it over to papa I was laughing so hard my eyes were watering. Trust me, there is no way words can convey what a hilariously absurd spectacle I just witnessed. I picked up big blue, said "you've been causing trouble haven't you?" and went off to catch a shuttle to the parking lot, leaving everyone there still standing like the mindless drones they were, and hoping that if a suitcase ever started closing in on my nads, I could summon the willpower to move back a few inches.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The Beginning Of My Trip; The Head Of Mickey Mouse Lords Over My Dead Body

So I know you're all dying to hear about my vacation. No you're not, but there are a couple stories I'm going to throw out into the blogosphere anyway. The whole trip got off to a rather inauspicious start when this thing greets me at the runway:


Important informational note; I was nowhere near Disneyland at the time, and the plane was going to be taking me about a thousand miles further away.

As I boarded through Donald's hat, I immediately pictured the news footage that would occur should the vessel go down in a ball of flames. I don't know if this holds up in real life, but it seems like in a lot of pictures I've seen of plane crashes, for whatever reason, the tail seems to survive mostly intact. So as I settled into my seat, I closed my eyes and imagined what it would look like to have Mickey Mouse's grinning face perched over my broken, battered, bruised, and completely unidentifiable body . Then I kinda chuckled. I hoped that if the worst should happen I would at least have time to text message one of my friends on the way down:

watch news 2nite; look 4 irony. Goodbye.

I decided that if I have to go anytime soon, that wouldn't be a bad way. I suppose this makes me some sort of sick bastard.

Hate Mail!! Awesome!!!

Nothing makes me happier than pissing off Republicans. That is why I was so excited to get back from vacation and find a comment from someone calling themselves "GOP PharmD" in my mailbox. Knowing that one only gets attacked when one is being effective, and figuring someone calling themselves "GOP PharmD" wouldn't be writing me a love letter, it was with eager anticipation I opened the message and found this:

Is this all you liberals have to do now? It amazes me how f***ing stupid you liberals are. If you only knew the whole story, you would have seen that this was a planned search as he entered the U.S. You liberals bitch about the rights of terrorists but have no respect for the rights of American citizens...get a life!!!

I would remind you again that the person who wrote those words claims to have a Doctor of Pharmacy degree.

Man. Talk about having the air let out of my balloon. The first guy/gal who wants a piece of me and they can only regurgitate what Rush himself says on his show. Maybe they think I don't own a radio. Oh well, dealt a lemon, I shall proceed to make lemonade. Here we go. Key points:


1) No denial that Limbaugh did what he is being accused of.

2) However much my comments on Limbaugh may be a reflection of a less than ideal life, I would point out that GOP PharmD took time out of their life not only to read, but to respond to them.

3) Here's a favorite of mine that is ideal for this situation. I call it the Hillary/Michael Moore test. Here's how it works. Whenever some fire breathing Cro-Magnon Conservative tells me how our wanker in chief needs to collect our phone records, our financial records, out CIA agents, and tap into our Internet activity because it's necessary for the president to do his job, I just say "So you'll be telling me the same thing if Hillary Clinton takes office in 2009, right?" They usually get kind of quiet after that. Just like GOP PharmD will when I ask him what would he think if Michael Moore had been busted with the Viagra and not the alternatingly fat and thin right wing gasbag.

4) And now for the coup de grâce.....

You liberals bitch about the rights of terrorists but have no respect for the rights of American citizens


Really? Cause you know what? When Rush got his alternatingly fat/thin ass in trouble for being a narcotic addict there was an organization that pointed out that his medical records were released improperly during the investigation, and sued in court to protect his privacy rights. Who was this group? One of those right wing legal foundations that hounded Bill Clinton for 8 years?

Nope.

The Heritage foundation or one of those other conservative think tanks?

Nope.

Perhaps someone with a business interest in Limbaugh? A media company that syndicates his show?

Nope.

It was the ACLU. Of which I am a card carrying member, and I think they did the right thing.

But since us liberals only care about the rights of terrorists, and liberals are defending Rush, you must think Rush is a terrorist. The fact that you listen to a terrorist radio program means you really must hate America. Why don't you just leave if you hate it so much? Or at least have the decency to turn yourself in to the FBI.

You see my stupid little friend, when we PROVE terrorists are terrorists before we drop them off the top of the skyscraper that will soon stand where the World Trade Center was......when we PROVE Rush Limbaugh is a junkie the proper way, respecting his legal right to medical privacy before we send him off to jail where he says all drug offenders belong....THAT'S WHAT MAKES US BETTER THAN THE BARBARIANS WE ARE FIGHTING. We didn't defeat Hitler by becoming fascists, we didn't win the cold war by setting up gulags to control our citizens. We have forgotten it was the power of our ideas that carried the day in those struggles, and that's why Bush is losing his self-declared "war on terror"

So in conclusion:

1) Go to hell.

2) If before you get there anyone violates your constitutional rights, I'll be the first to fight for you, you fucking inarticulate dumbass.