leitmotiv comments

Too early to celebrate. Even if the 31% risk reduction is accurate, that still leaves a 69% chance you will become infected after having unprotected sex with an HIV+ partner. That's like playing Russian Roulette with a revolver that has 4 loaded chambers and two empty ones. Who likes those odds?

Celebration is indeed in order. Vaccine projects against HIV have generally been failures. A lot due to difficult biology, but also significantly due to underfunding and only modest interest from the real sources of cash for these expensive trials, namely global pharmas. They would generally rather use R&D funds to develop antivirals which customers must use repeatedly, rather than a one-time injection.

Ha! I'll try to care about this affont to decorum that the poor, hapless "older men" are forced to endure the next time I see all those older men on the crowded hibya line with a finger stuck into ear or nose to the 2nd knuckle rooting around for some elusive, crusty booger - right in front of everyone.

Man up, my friend.

This means zero coming from you.

Operation Rescue is a terrorist cell. When will authorities act?

Rachel Maddow just connected the dots last night. http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/28677

"If you're so pro-life, do me a favour: don't lock arms and block medical clinics. If you're so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries."

Bill Hicks

"Charter flights would bring healthy Japanese back home, but those infected would be asked stay abroad and foreigners would be restricted from entry."

LOL - how will that work? Charter planes packed with diagnostic kits and medical teams will fly to all corners of the globe where J-nationals are - set up medical tents for Japanese only - test everyone who shows up - allowing only negative testers on the the plane - and "asking" the rest to please wait here with the other infected masses, "please dont come home"

Also, whatever kit they use for testing better be about 100% accurate. One missed positive, and the whole plane load on the way home will catch it.

Color me doubtful.

Even the World Health Organization calls bullsh*t on Panasonic

"WHO perplexed by Panasonic's move to repatriate staff families over flu fears" http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jLUuqDPigXW6AMydQOD6_QtdYFLw

This is not the first time WHO has been puzzled by Japanese "strategies" on influenza public health topics

We Americans have paid the price for so many other countries and very rarely are we thanked for the service we do.

You mean in this case thanked - after they have presumably already thanked the US previously for putting him in power and supplying him with goods and know-how for his crimes? Honestly the level of self delusion among the warhawks around here is utterly astonishing.

Consider for a moment that if the US hadnt gone to defend Kuwait in 1991 we wouldnt be in this stuation now(of course Saddam would have control of Kuwait and most people would be suffering a lot more in Iraq and Kuwait).

Utter nonsense. SH offered to leave Kuwait in the face of US invasion - but invasion and the attendant human suffering was preferred by bush sr. - so illegal invading the US did go. Only to sell out the kurds later and let SH go genocidal bonkers on them again with his planes and helicopters while schwartzkopf stood by shrugging his shoulders "golly....look at that would ya?....whaddaya gonna do?"

TooFarGoon:

More of Baghdad Bob, Saddam mouthpiece and, judging from what B flag, cleo, smithjapan and friends have vented here, apparently some kind of proto-Lefty blahblahblhblah.....

Honestly - cant you actually come up with a cogent argument instead of just standing there insisting that everyone who does not agree with the war must therefore support SH. That is so incredibly lame and tired and illogical. Just try.

techall at 11:57 AM JST - 15th December leitmotive: Your "facts" are a bit off. The U.S. did not put Saddam Hussein in office. Saddam was vice-president under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr who assumed the presidency as the result of a coup. Saddam became president and dictator in 1979 - Carter administration. The U.S was unaware of the gassing of Kurds until after the fact. Most Favored Nation trading status does not give "diplomatic cover" to anybody it is a commercial status which is also called Normal Trade Relations. I suggest you research your "facts" before your next post.

Nice that you can spout the talking points of some of the hawkish think tanks funded by the CIA. But parroting things you heard does not make them true. I suggest you research your facts. It has long been alleged by many many former govt diplomats and officials that US clandestine service help SH get into power. That is nothing new – the US has done it to get all sorts of autocratic-but-pro-US dirtbags into power countless times (indonesia, iran, virtually every country in central america, etc etc). You could say its their specialty and to deny they were involved in any way with SH entering and climbing the political ladder in iraq is a whole new level of propaganda swallowing that is difficult to understand. The US did indeed give SH diplomatic cover – plus cash and equipment plus military guidance. The equipment he used for “gassing his own people” were happily sold to him from the west including the US, germany, and many others. How did he buy them? Why with the billions of dollars of credits and loan guarantees the US gave him when it seemed they could rely on him to beat the crap out of iran (who had kicked out another US dictator earlier – a different failed “democracy” experiment of the US that had gone all frankenstein and needed to be contained). How else did the US provide for that war crime other than cold hard cash and equipment? Well they were able to buy these dangerous toys because Reagan had removed iraq from the “states who sponsor terrorism” list. That is called diplomatic support. And the US intellegence was fully aware at the time of what happened and who did it. There was some feeble claims that the epicenter of all evil (at that time) Iran had partial responsibility – but the US knew full well that most or all of it was good old SH. US spy satellites at the time were focused intensely on that area – which makes it hard to claim that “the US was unaware” (LOL!!) – and therefore that US intelligence was less reliable than the accurate reports at the time of groups like Human Rights Watch (who do not maintain a satellite network as far as I know). The US basically knew because, basically, it held the receipts of the materials used. You should occasionally read something other than propaganda.

"You think they should be grateful? For what?"Oh, for liberating them from an awful dictator, giving them the opportunity to choose their own leaders, you know, stuff like that.

That's wierd, they also did not thank the US for helping put Saddam in power in the first place. Nor for keeping Iraq in most favored trading status even as the US was aware that he was "gassing his own people" - effectively giving him diplomatic cover - this was later one of the major claims against him during the so-called trials of SH. I guess in your book they must be REALLY REALLY ungrateful people, those iraqis. Absolutely delusional. The shoe and insults flung at bush were methaphorically flung at you too sarge.

Tatanka at 07:48 AM JST - 15th December

I bet if that guy was in Iran and he threw a shoe at the Iranian president, his head would already be separated from his body. The Iraqis are the most ungrateful people on this earth...

Holy crap....what are you smoking? You think they should be grateful? For what?

TheStreet.com just named Elan's CEO the "worst biotech CEO of 2008". And there was some good competition for that prize, it seems.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10452694/1/elans-martin-named-worst-biotech-ceo-of-08.html

But why take any risk? vote McCain.

LOL yes thats right....with McCaine you know exactly what you get, more Bush policies (aka endless war, devalued dollar, diminishing US allies, unaccountability, and further dismantling of US constitution). That is, at least until Palin takes over when McCain's melanoma reactivates. Then you get: http://www.palinaspresident.us/

To me Socialism is not even good for garden's fertiliser

You must be unhappy with both parties in the US then, after the US Govt. bipartisan socialist moves to bail out the banks with $700B+ of the future earnings of the american proletariat.

Rove' fingerprints are all over this for sure - just like the Don Siegelman case.

Basically, under Obama, if you make more then 20k a year, you'll pay more.

You mean if you make more than 250K, which will thus not apply to 95% of US taxpayers

The worst president of the 20th century.

Well it looks like you have already accepted defeat. But that title has already been given to the current WH occupant

RomeoRamenII at 05:52 PM JST - 16th October

Donkeyleitmotiv2/3injapan, you've been caught out. You will forever be known as an American wannabee at this site. Get over it and move on with your life ... at least all four of them.

LOL.....silly little man

I wonder how much of a role Karl Rove had in the debate preparation for mcsame.

as their desperation mounts.

desperation? really?

The GOP supporters actually believe their own fairytales. Whatever is in that koolaid, its pretty potent.

Nippon5

I asked what racist attack has McCain done, or even Palin... Please educate me Im a little lost on how you can link it to McCain when its a supporter doing it... If that was the case then Obama is as prejudice as McCain and more Racist... but we dont judge the man by who follows him we judge him by what he does and says..

show me were McCain or Palin issued a racist statement..

Im Waiting.......

You dont have to issue a direct racist statement to make a racist attack. Just like you dont have to directly say that sadam and al qaeda are directly linked to get (highly-suggestible) people to spontaneously internalize and think it. You just have to use suggestive marketing techniques and constant repetition of the ideas in a strategic sequence and context. This is the GOP's racist attcks to which I refer. If you think the racist violent remarks from the crowds ("Sit down boy!", "Hang him!", "Bomb Obama!") are some sort of unexpected artifact that just spontaneously erupted from nowhere....youre delusional. There is probably nothing more strategized, scripted and message-managed than a US pres campaign. To the mcsame planners, these racist reactions are deliberate. They are planned. They are desired.

I suppose you would claim that limbaugh is just a side show act, marginal little GOP supportee.....spouting his own private backward racist diatribe. But he has an enormous audience of suggestible ill-informed robots and has shown himself historically to want to deliver his audience votes to particular candidates. Hardly just a supporter. But according to your view that the poor GOP is so innocent, I should perhaps wait for mcsame to jump up to denounce limbaugh's disgusting racist attacks that were uttered on behalf of mcsame. Something tells me i would be waiting a long time for that.

You dont have to issue a direct racist statement to make a racist attack. Just like you dont have to directly say that sadam and al qaeda are directly linked to get (highly-suggestible) people to spontaneously internalize and think it. You just have to use suggestive marketing techniques and constant repetition of the ideas in a strategic sequence and context. This is the GOP's racist attcks to which I refer. If you think the racist violent remarks from the crowds ("Sit down boy!", "Hang him!", "Bomb Obama!") are some sort of unexpected artifact that just spontaneously erupted from nowhere....youre delusional. There is probably nothing more strategized, scripted and message-managed than a US pres campaign. To the mcsame planners, these racist reactions are deliberate. They are planned. They are desired.

I suppose you would claim that limbaugh is just a side show act, marginal little GOP supportee.....spouting his own private backward racist diatribe. But he has an enormous audience of suggestible ill-informed robots and has shown himself historically to want to deliver his audience votes to particular candidates. Hardly just a supporter. But according to your view that the poor GOP is so innocent, I should perhaps wait for mcsame to jump up to denounce limbaugh's disgusting racist attacks that were uttered on behalf of mcsame. Something tells me i would be waiting a long time for that.

Its open knowledge the GOP is in complete disarray now and the only thing they can do is spew racist hatred out into thir audience and hope it sticks in their tiny heads. Shamefully (for the US) a lot of it seems to stick, particularly at the palin rallies - well documented racist reactions in the audience is easy to find on google etc.

Todays racist act of GOP desperation is limbaugh claiming that angry black have been in a 30 year plot to train black children as militants

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rINTuGofGT0

According to common sense, the correct choice here is McCain-Palin.

.....if you like bush and hate america

As for 1/3 attempting suicide, maybe their lifestyle has some serious flaws in it. Maybe the lifestyle doesn't lend itself to true fulfillment or happiness. Perhaps, in kindergartens of Massachusettes they should require teachers to not only read "My two fathers", but also to teach how to successfully commit suicide.

How friggin inhuman and emotionally bankrupt are you are for saying that? Its commonly known that self-loathing closeted homosexuals are the most voiciferous and irrational opponents.

Man is a bisexual species. Period.

Oh well. Too bad for them. Maybe they can regain some self-respect and find peace by working even harder to send their kids to business schools in whatever European country it is they came from.

Still irrelevant. And lame.

Comedy gold....I tell you.

"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border."

--Sarah Palin, explaining why Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience, interview with CBS's Katie Couric, Sept. 24, 2008

"I personally know 2 execs who took their harvard MBAs off their office walls after shrub "won" in 2004. Deeply embarrasing alma mater."

Barney Frank and Franklin Raines are both Harvard grads.

Kinda irrelevant.....but I'll spell it out for ya anyway...Frank and Raines are not reasons they did that. It was out of personal disgust for dubya and the low standards he represents.

On the other hand we have Sarah Palin who with McCain's encouragement or lack of supervision slurs Obama.

You can be sure that there is no "lack of supervision" in a US presidential campaign. The ugliness and negativity you are seeing from the McSame side is carefully considered and implemented by teams of eggheads, including rove.