I don’t know much about this topic, I’ll be the first to admit. I’m not keen on making money I don’t earn, and I don’t think anyone is “earning” money unless they’re doing productive work. But as long as capitalism rewards laziness, people will want to make money by virtue of having money, so here are some websites that discuss the dilemma Pete raised today (and got chewed out for so much as pondering)…

John from Cleveland called in and pointed out that the poor pharmaceutical companies say they spend “billions of dollars” on ten failed drugs for every successful drug. That’s a really common argument that the drug companies and their supporters like to trot out at every chance.

Except it’s not true. In fact, the prices drug companies charge often have almost nothing to do with the cost of developing or manufacturing a given drug. They sometimes charge up to 20 times the actual cost of production on drugs when they neither conducted nor paid for the research.

In fact, companies spend 2.5 times as much on marketing as they do on research and development. And a lot of the R&D they don’t even do themselves — it’s performed by universities and government labs and then practically donated to corporations so they can make whopping profits. Or it’s performed by independent biotech firms and sold to the big companies after development.

And since pharmaceuticals is one of the most profitable industries, in terms of the actual margin, even after their gigantic marketing expenditures — how can it be remotely true that what we’re paying for is their design and testing costs? And how come those same companies are willing to sell the very same drugs to other countries, where caps are instituted, for less money than they charge American retailers? If we refused to pay more (or rather, if insurance companies refused or the government forced a ceiling on prices), they’d still sell the same drugs, and they’d still make huge profits.

So the next time you hear the violins playing for the Big Pharma, break the violin over your knee.

Caller Pete from Idaho mentioned the rumored nationwide truck strike. There’s no telling how widespread it will be until it happens, but he wasn’t pulling the idea out of his ass. Here’s a New York Times story on it.

Here’s the online version of Bush’s War, the PBS Frontline special. Personally, I was disappointed that the documentary really is not about the war at all. It’s actually about the White House, State Department, Pentagon and Coalition Provisional Authority, and the politics and decisions surrounding and interlinking them all. It’s not about the troops, or Iraqis, and makes virtually no mention of international public opinion or the unprecedented antiwar movement. Still, it’s very good reporting for what it actually covers, and it will likely drop your jaw at several points.

Update: Here’s the website for We Can Solve It, the project that guest Cathy Zoi of the Alliance for Climate Protection.

Poor Pete. When he played T-ball, his body was so tiny, but his head was massive. He had to wear a young adult helmet even though he only weighed 52 pounds (that includes the bat).

Need proof? Behold…

Amy Goodman of Democracy Now caught up with Barack Obama in New York City. She pressed him on his intentions regarding a withdrawal from Iraq, but when she got specific about what a real withdrawal would mean, it kind of sounds like the O man needs to think about how to answer the harder questions. Then again, since he’s not likely to get asked again by the complacent corporate media, he’s probably fine. Here’s the juiciest snippet:

GOODMAN: Can you call for a ban on the private military contractors like Blackwater?
OBAMA: I’ve actually—I’m the one who sponsored the bill that called for the investigation of Blackwater in [inaudible], so—
AMY GOODMAN: But would you support the [Sen. Barry] Sanders [bill] now?
OBAMA: Here’s the problem: we have 140,000 private contractors right there, so unless we want to replace all of or a big chunk of those with US troops, we can’t draw down the contractors faster than we can draw down our troops. So what I want to do is draw—I want them out in the same way that we make sure that we draw out our own combat troops. Alright? I mean, I—
GOODMAN: Not a ban?
OBAMA: Well, I don’t want to replace those contractors with more US troops, because we don’t have them, alright?

Gee, that was kind of a snippy answer. Maybe if we can get another hundred thousand mercenaries in there, we can replace our troops altogether? Oh, better yet: let’s just sell the Army and USMC units that are over there now to Halliburton! I’m sure they could come up with the money somehow, like another cost-plus Pentagon contract.

By the way, Hillary has signed on to the Sanders bill, which would “ban the use of all State Department private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Before anyone hijacks my other posts for discussions of unrelated topics, I’m throwing out an open thread so you can talk about politics, news items, ball-shaving, whatever. As usual, the only rule is civility — topically speaking, anything goes.

Yesterday, Pete sent me this Salon.com piece on Iraq and the so-called “War on Terror,” and I just now got done reading it. It’s quite long, and doesn’t contain anything I haven’t seen elsewhere in some form. But it is a really coherent analysis of the “Why they hate us” question, as well as a terrific presentation of just what’s going wrong in Iraq, and how deeply we are mired there. For instance, this insight:

The United States has made possible the rise to power in Iraq of a Shiite government that is allied with [Wasihington’s] major geopolitical antagonist in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran. And the United States has been fighting with great persistence and distinctly mixed results a Sunni insurgency that is allied with the Saudis, the Jordanians and its other longtime [US] friends among the traditional Sunni autocracies of the Gulf.

That is exactly true, and it puts the sheer idiocy of US policy in perspective.

Here’s the opening paragraph, which graphically exposes just how big of a mess our government has made in Iraq:

To contemplate a prewar map of Baghdad — as I do the one before me, with sectarian neighborhoods traced out in blue and red and yellow — is to look back on a lost Baghdad, a Baghdad of our dreams. My map of 2003 is colored mostly a rather neutral yellow, indicating the “mixed” neighborhoods of the city, predominant just five years ago. To take up a contemporary map after this is to be confronted by a riot of bright color: Shiite blue has moved in irrevocably from the east of the Tigris; Sunni red has fled before it, as Shiite militias pushed the Sunnis inexorably west toward Abu Ghraib and Anbar province, and nearly out of the capital itself. And everywhere, it seems, the pale yellow of those mixed neighborhoods is gone, obliterated in the months and years of sectarian war.

Let’s put the Michael Scheuer controversy aside and discuss the issues on their merits. Is the US making progress in the fight against Islamist terrorism? If you read this article, which mostly relies on US intelligence, it would be hard to conclude that we are.

It looks like those who insisted everything is getting better in Iraq spoke too soon. Didn’t they realize how dumb it was to gloat just because things were sounding better for a minute?

When Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki first issued his disarmament ultimatum to Muqtada Al-Sadr’s militia (the Mahdi Army), which was kicking Iraqi troops asses in Basra and Sadr City, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Mahdi is pretty strong, and it has firm support in those two areas, unlike the US-backed forces. They were not about to surrender. But when Maliki gave a 10-day extension, he might as well told his own troops to surrender.

It turns out they’re starting to do that anyway. Buried at the bottom of a pretty good LA Times article today:

There were reports of some weapons handovers today, but not the kind Maliki was seeking.

In Sadr City, about 40 members of the National Police went to the main Sadr office to offer their weapons. They said they did not want to battle fellow Shiites.

In exchange, they were given olive branches and Korans, according to witnesses.

Does anyone still think we’re “winning”?

Update: Oh, it just keeps getting better. After yesterday pledging “no retreat” in the fight against the Mahdi Army, NPR is reporting that Maliki himself today had to literally retreat when his own bunker came under mortar attack.

Also, here’s some more from the LA Times on the backwards arms surrender, pictured in the photo above.

What a revelation in the final hour of the show today! Board Op Aaron’s mom Patricia called in to chastize Pete for claiming she doesn’t like his show (which he said behind her back after she hung up during the first hour). But then, to demonstrate her honesty and forthrightness, Patricia revealed that Aaron was “an ugly baby.” Aaron immediately replied and retracted his appreciative letter to his mother, which he had read on the air during Hour 1.

The PBM studio was really shaken up by revelations that Aaron — who I can attest is a good looking fellow today — was once unbearably hideous. So ugly, in fact, that Patricia did not take or even allow any photos for the first six months of Aaron’s life.

Maybe we’ll have Patricia sit down with a forensic artist and develop a sketch of Newborn Aaron. In the meantime, if you have a guess as to what Ugly Aaron looked like, send it to me at bigbroXX@petesbigmouth.com (remove the XX).

Also, if you don’t think Patricia sounds like the coolest mom this side of Mama Mary, you hate freedom.

If you didn’t pee a little when Pete and John from Alabama were talking about today’s “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff Moment”, you have no sense of humor. John’s attempt to hijack “the Moment” to re-plug his website (butterbeehappy.com), and Pete calling him on it, was the thing I’m most grateful for so far today.

What do you all think about these new daily moments? Did Pete not do the same thing he accused “Small Stuff John” of doing by hijacking the moment to tell a personal story about his wife? Will the producers of Lost ever tell us what the hell is going on with the plot?