A Very Useful Website

I can think of at least one hundred people I should send this link to.

New Black Panthers for Obama! (With friends like these…)

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Oh, ‘Bama! With friends like these, who needs enemies?

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• Gateway Pundit reports on the New Black Panther Party’s endorsement of Barack Obama.

• Fox News reports that the Obama Camp has removed the New Black Panther Endorsement from their website.

• Jon Ham’s thoughts, and pictures of the New Black Panthers from one of their protests at Duke University.

John Kerry: Obama will “bridge the divide of religious extremism” because he’s black.

Oh, John Kerry. I don’t think this is going to help much. Or, er, are you secretly working for Hillary?

ABC News’s Jake Tapper sums up Kery’s endorsement of Obama:

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Kerry said that a President Obama would help the US, in relations with Muslim countries, “in some cases go around their dictator leaders to the people and inspire the people in ways that we can’t otherwise.”

“He has the ability to help us bridge the divide of religious extremism,” Kerry said. “To maybe even give power to moderate Islam to be able to stand up against this radical misinterpretation of a legitimate religion.”

Kerry was asked what gives Obama that credibility.

“Because he’s African-American. Because he’s a black man. Who has come from a place of oppression and repression through the years in our own country.”

An African-American president would be “a symbol of empowerment” for those who have been disenfranchised around the world, Kerry said, “an important lesson for America to show Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other places in the world where disenfranchised people don’t get anything.”

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This “typical black” endorsement comes hot on the heels of Obama’s description of his “racist” Grandmother as a “typical white.” Read here for James Taranto’s comments on Kerry’s endorsement.

And, sort of off-topic but still on the whole guilt/victimhood collective thing, be sure to read David Thompson’s “Phantom Guilt Syndrome” (via a link at Tim Blair’s)

–via WSJ/James Taranto

UPDATE:  Tizona’s post on this has the video of John Kerry.

What an idiot. This guy came close to being President…But wait, if you buy today we will toss in TWO, YES TWO, Obama’s

‘Because He’s a Black Man’: Kerry Believes Obama Will Help With Muslims

Nothing suggesting racism here….Move along.

Best Photoshop Thread Ever: If Dogs Ruled the World

Go over to FARK and prepare for LOLZ.

Via Good Lt. at The Jawa Report.

Of Course

Click Click.

Grandma’s just a “typical white person”

Ouch.

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UPDATE:  Are you a “typical white person”?

YouTube winners announced

A GIGGLING baby, a guy who demonstrates how to cheat the Rubik’s Cube and accapella finger puppets bombed out of Hogwarts have been voted the top videos on YouTube.

The winners in 12 categories were announced in the US today after a vote by YouTube users.

Among them was What the Buck’s barbed LonelyGirl15 is Dead!, which smashed opposition in the commentary category with 43 per cent of the votes.

Other winners included Battle at Kruger, a gripping illustration of the food chain, in the eyewitness category, and Balloon Bowl – a skateboarder carving his way through hundreds of blue balloons – in the sport section.

YouTube said the nominees had been viewed more than a quarter of a billion times.

Click here to view the winners. I have to admit I hadn’t seen most of them. Personally, I think I prefer some of the music vids served up here in the past day or so. If you have alternate favourites, link them in comments below.

-via news.com.au

The Frollicking Mole Will Like This

It’s pretty long, so click for it.

The FDA and foreign drug ingredients

As a complete and utter layman with no medical or scientific training, I can’t help but wonder: How do cheap, counterfeit, and contaminated ingredients from small, unregulated Chinese consolidators find their way into mainstream American drugs such as Baxter’s Heparin?

In the recent Heparin case, Baxter has said that its investigators have not been able to get permission from the Chinese to visit these operations, and the FDA has not yet done inspections on any of these facilities either.

So what’s the deal with FDA-approved drugs with Chinese ingredients? Some fast facts from here, here and here:

China has an estimated 80,000 chemical companies, and the FDA doesn’t know how many sell ingredients used in drugs consumed by Americans (or on-sold from America to other countries).

An AstraZeneca exec recently acknowledged plans for outsourcing production of some of their bestselling meds in the Far East, including China.

Professor Michael Santoro, Business Ethicist from Rutgers Business School, states that currently “there are only 10 or so drugs or ingredients that are covered by the [FDA Product Safety] agreement” (in relation to foreign manufactured drugs).

According to Dr. Janet Woodcock, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the FDA focuses on domestic companies, with only about 10 percent of the foreign facilities shipping pharmaceuticals to the US inspected annually. (note: if that.)

In many cases, it is left up to the pharmaceutical company to inspect these foreign factories and, as in the case with Heparin, sometimes they are not granted permission by the foreign government to do so.

The FDA recently received approval from the US State Department to establish eight full-time, permanent positions at US diplomatic posts in the People’s Republic of China.

According to the FDA, the permanent overseas offices in China are being created in the hopes of allowing increased access for inspections and greater interactions with manufacturers to help ensure products shipped to the US meet US standards for safety and manufacturing quality.

These appointments are still pending authorization from the Chinese government.

In November, the Government Accountability Office found the FDA didn’t know how many foreign firms are actually subject to inspection. The agency has a list of 3,249 firms, some of them small unregulated family operations, but at the current rate of inspection, it would take the FDA over 13 years to go through each firm on its list.

The agency (FDA) also could not confirm how many foreign firms have never been inspected.

The Democrat in charge of an appropriations panel responsible for FDA funding says that this is “embarrassing,” but in true Lefty fashion, she blames George Bush, claiming that it simply demonstrates the FDA’s “myriad failures under the Bush administration.” (Wow. Wonder whether there’s any cheap and nasty imported drug to treat Bush Derangement Syndrome?)

Timing-wise, the Heparin situation was unfolding around the same time that the US Congress was holding yet another hearing into the problem of drugs in sport. Observation from a friend who was directly involved in the Heparin contamination fall-out: “It simply amazes me how Congress is full force when it comes to making sure they weed out HGH and steroids in Major League Baseball, but when it comes to Chinese-manufactured medications and ingredients killing and injuring people in the U.S. and around the world, we seem to not be so attentive.”

Maybe we need a bad batch of foreign-made HGH or steroids affecting a pro athlete to get people outraged enough to demand that something be done to stop this madness?

(see also my previous posts on this here and here.)