Barack Obama, our next President

[TheIndependentMa jority]

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/07...

Has anyone explained WHY there is an "Axis of evil(e)" theory to the current admin yet?

[TheIndependentMa jority]

MORE FDA-less EPA!

Pharmacy tied to fungal meningitis outbreak files for bankruptcy
By JoNel Aleccia, Senior Writer, NBC News

The compounding pharmacy blamed for 620 infections and 39 deaths in an outbreak of fungal meningitis and other infections caused by contaminated drugs filed for bankruptcy Friday, and pledged to establish a fund to compensate victims.

The New England Compounding Center of Framingham, Mass., faces more than 400 lawsuits from patients who received epidural steroid injections later found to be tainted with fungus linked to serious and lethal infections, records showed.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the Massachusetts district bankruptcy court.

In a statement issued late Friday, the company said the goal of the bankruptcy is to provide a "greater, quicker, fairer payout" to creditors than could be achieved through "piecemeal" litigation.

NECC also announced the appointment of Keith D. Lowey as the firm's independent director and chief restructuring officer. He will supervise the restructuring and be responsible for establishing NECC's effort to create a compensation fund. NECC's bankruptcy counsel, Daniel Cohn, said that claimants and their lawyers will be "actively involved" in the compensation process, according to the statement.

"Many families across the U.S. have been impacted by this great tragedy, and it is difficult to comprehend the sense of loss so many people have experienced," Lowey said in a statement. "Everyone associated with the New England Compounding Center shares that sense of loss."

Elizabeth A. Kaveny, a lawyer who represents five clients, all in Michigan, who said they were sickened by contaminated shots, says the company's action is no guarantee of justice for the alleged victims.

"NECC gets no bonus points for establishing a 'victims' compensation fund' after victimizing hundreds of patients in our country," she said in a statement to NBC News. "It is an obvious and necessary step of a bankruptcy proceeding and all victims need to be compensated. While NECC clearly should declare bankruptcy and never be permitted to reopen its doors, we have significant questions as to why this is a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, what funds are available for NECC's victims and how the victims' claims will be evaluated."

Problems with three lots of NECC steroids injected into some 14,000 people in 23 states were first detected in September. The company was shuttered in October after federal inspectors found widespread evidence of contamination throughout the pharmacy, some dating back to January.

The firm was licensed as a compounding pharmacy and was supposed to be mixing medications to order on prescription-by-prescription basis. However, investigations have shown the firm worked on a much larger scale and evaded several run-ins with the Food and Drug Administration and state regulators over the size of its operation and previous cases of contamination.

The illnesses and deaths -- which include not only fungal meningitis, but strokes, joint infections and spinal infections -- have prompted new demands to overhaul the way that compounding pharmacies are regulated in the U.S.

[TheIndependentMa jority]

Lucky phone call alerted CDC to fungal meningitis outbreak

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

CDC officials meet at the beginning of the outbreak of fungal meningitis, which has now killed 39 people and made more than 600 ill.
By Maggie Fox, Senior Writer, NBC News

A single phone call from a North Carolina clinic gave a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigator the heads up she needed to realize that an outbreak of fungal meningitis, which has now killed 39 people and made 620 sick, was likely going to be a national emergency.

The CDC published its first account on Wednesday of how state and federal investigators have handled the outbreak, and the agency warns the trouble is still not over. The report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, describes how doctors, public health officials and clinic workers raced to track down patients at risk from lots of contaminated pain medication.

Dr. Rachel Smith had only been working at the CDC’s fungal diseases branch for a year and a half when the reports came in last September about a patient at a Tennessee pain clinic who had a very unusual type of meningitis, apparently caused by a fungus. Dr. April Pettit, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University who treated the patient, had notified the Tennessee Department of Health, which in turn notified CDC.

There was a chance the contamination was a local problem, perhaps from dirty needles at the one clinic.

----------

Nasty... Nasty stuff.

[RealDave]

Aphelion wrote:

<quoted text>
Not surprising that you discount all the scientists who claim that global warming "is not" caused by man. More of your selective thinking? Or are you calling them liars?

I'm going with the majority of climatologists.

You can stick with your fossil fuel funded weathermen.

[RealDave]

flack wrote:

<quoted text> There is a difference between reality and fairy tales. The technology is here to do everything posted and a lot more. Speculation is just that, guessing. The world has dealt with a lot worse and will deal with a lot more. It will still be spinning around the sun long after we aren't even a memory.
Voyager I has left the solar system. It will be 80,000 years before it even gets close to another star. Mankind most likely will be extinct by then. Can you grasp that?

We know the man has been pumping millions of tons of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere for decades.

What is insane is to think it doesn't matter.

They used to think that dumping garbage & sewage into the oceans wouldn't matter.

[RealDave]

Aphelion wrote:

<quoted text>
The fools on the left see racism in every opposition to their views regardless as to whether anything racial has even been mentioned. Its part of your pathetic defense mechanism to the truth.

Calling a black man "boy" is a racial slur.

defending it just paints you with the same brush.

[No Surprize]

RealDave wrote:

<quoted text>
I'm going with the majority of climatologists.
You can stick with your fossil fuel funded weathermen.

Yet RealDave heats and cools his house with fossil fuel and drives a fossil fuel car and consumes and throws away plastic. Being deranged, in denial lying to yourself is best, you being a hypocrite to impress everyone RealDave.

[flack]

RealDave wrote:

<quoted text>
We know the man has been pumping millions of tons of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere for decades.
What is insane is to think it doesn't matter.
They used to think that dumping garbage & sewage into the oceans wouldn't matter.

Answer me these two questions please. How much rain is falling on the earth right now? What percentage of the earth is covered by clouds right now?

[flack]

No Surprize wrote:

<quoted text>Yet RealDave heats and cools his house with fossil fuel and drives a fossil fuel car and consumes and throws away plastic. Being deranged, in denial lying to yourself is best, you being a hypocrite to impress everyone RealDave.

He will tell you he doesn't.

[No Surprize]

RealDave wrote:

<quoted text>
Calling a black man "boy" is a racial slur.
defending it just paints you with the same brush.

That's funny RealDave. We can easily tell where your head is stuck racist.

[sonicfilter]

Rand Paul's Drone Rant

Give Rand Paul credit for theatrical timing. As a snow storm descended on Washington, the Kentucky Republican's old-fashioned filibuster Wednesday filled the attention void on Twitter and cable TV. If only his reasoning matched the showmanship.

Shortly before noon, Senator Paul began a talking filibuster against John Brennan's nomination to lead the CIA. The tactic is rarely used in the Senate and was last seen in 2010. But Senator Paul said an "alarm" had to be sounded about the threat to Americans from their own government. He promised to speak "until the President says, no, he will not kill you at a café." He meant by a military drone. He's apparently serious, though his argument isn't.

Senator Paul had written the White House to inquire about the possibility of a drone strike against a U.S. citizen on American soil. Attorney General Eric Holder replied that the U.S. hasn't and "has no intention" to bomb any specific territory. Drones are limited to the remotest areas of conflict zones like Pakistan and Yemen. But as a hypothetical Constitutional matter, Mr. Holder acknowledged the President can authorize the use of lethal military force within U.S. territory.

This shocked Senator Paul, who invoked the Constitution and Miranda rights. Under current U.S. policy, Mr. Paul mused on the floor, Jane Fonda could have been legally killed by a Hellfire missile during her tour of Communist Hanoi in 1972. A group of noncombatants sitting in public view in Houston may soon be pulverized, he declared.

Calm down, Senator. Mr. Holder is right, even if he doesn't explain the law very well. The U.S. government cannot randomly target American citizens on U.S. soil or anywhere else. What it can do under the laws of war is target an "enemy combatant" anywhere at anytime, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant. The President can designate such a combatant if he belongs to an entity—a government, say, or a terrorist network like al Qaeda—that has taken up arms against the United States as part of an internationally recognized armed conflict. That does not include Hanoi Jane.

Such a conflict exists between the U.S. and al Qaeda, so Mr. Holder is right that the U.S. could have targeted (say) U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki had he continued to live in Virginia. The U.S. killed him in Yemen before he could kill more Americans. But under the law Awlaki was no different than the Nazis who came ashore on Long Island in World War II, were captured and executed.

The country needs more Senators who care about liberty, but if Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he's talking about.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788...

[No Surprize]

flack wrote:

<quoted text> He will tell you he doesn't.

If RealDave says he doesn't, so noted he is a certifiable liar, just to impress his deranged-self.

[No Surprize]

leftwingers are a bunch of big-government cop-lovers.

[BHObama]

No Surprize wrote:

leftwingers are a bunch of big-government cop-lovers.

Is that a Drone over your house?

[Demidiots]

BHObama wrote:

<quoted text>Is that a Drone over your house?

Democrat and Drones are a recipe for Mental illness and disaster. Courage in liberals is often mistaken with insanity.

[flack]

Google Glass will change the world.

[sonicfilter]

Demidiots wrote:

<quoted text>Democrat and Drones are a recipe for Mental illness and disaster. Courage in liberals is often mistaken with insanity.

John Bolton on Obama Drone Policy: Entirely Sensible, Extension of Bush Policies

http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/06/john-bolton...

[flack]

Europa's ocean may closely resemble Earth's

[sonicfilter]

Drones and strange bedfellows: Why neocons are showing Obama some love

And why liberals are starting to turn a cold shoulder. As John Brennan heads into his confirmation hearing, it's apparently opposite day in Washington

http://theweek.com/article/index/239840/drone...

[flack]

Evidence that comets could have seeded life on Earth