Federal regulators have warned Johnson & Johnson that it could face fines and other sanctions for selling faulty insulin pumps and delaying disclosures of serious injuries to diabetics who were using its OneTouch Ping and 2020 pumps. The FDA ordered the Animas Corp. unit of J&J to explain why it kept selling pumps known to fail and also to submit a plan to rectify a failure to promptly report cases in which its device might have caused or contributed to death or serious injury....
In the issue with the Animas insulin pumps, some pump keypads for controlling how much insulin is injected were deteriorating prematurely, leading to failures. "We decided to go with a new keypad because it's more durable," [spokesperson Caoline] Pavis said.
But while Animas was lining up the new keypad supplier, it was still selling the older ones. The FDA demanded documents about the company's decision to do that.

I may say some nasty and completely true things about the medical establishment.
I only started paying attention [to the ACCORD study] when the intensive blood sugar control arm was canceled. The more I found out about it, the angrier I got...ACCORD is a great example of most of what is wrong with American medicine, and with the way our media covers it....
From the beginning, ACCORD was a drug trial. The study called for participants to receive diet and exercise counseling if they wanted it, but set no guidelines for the counseling. There was no self-management group. It was all, repeat all, about the drugs.[Encouraging participating doctors to unsystematically and aggressively prescribe multiple drugs all but guaranteed drug interactions and adverse effects.]
In February, NHLBI stopped the intensive blood sugar control arm because more of the participants in that group were dying than in the normal care group.
Then came the outrageous part: NHLBI and media dummies came out saying that the intensive group’s blood sugars had been too low....
What kind of madness is this? You throw scads of drugs at sick people, treating only their numbers, not their bodies and lives as a whole. Then, when they die, you say it couldn’t have been the drugs. It must be the numbers. And you tell people with diabetes to get their blood sugars up.
You better believe that if ACCORD had shown a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths from intensive blood glucose management with drugs, those drugs would have become standard therapy for every person with Type 2 in the country. Nobody in the media would have said, “It wasn’t the drugs.” The drug companies would have made billions. That was the goal of the trial.

Unlike most of the windbags currently roaming Capitol Hill, this was a case of the federal government doing its job. And it wasn't only the FCC, it was the Department of Justice and some well-reasoned state attorneys general.
This is what effective regulation of corporate greed is supposed to look like. Not all mergers are a good idea because you say that they are. This was one of them.
[CEO Stephenson invoked the ruling to justify raising prices....] Because AT&T can't get more spectrum, and because it pursued an ill-advised and destructive method for pursuing more spectrum, it has to raise your prices. Do you feel that on your face? That's AT&T spitting on it....Customers should not pay for your mistakes, AT&T, nor should they pay for ineffective politicians who care more about disagreeing than they do about getting something done....
[Stephenson implied] that the FCC's inaction on spectrum also means that AT&T won't be able to create jobs through capital investment projects...AT&T used a similar "It will create jobs!" line when promoting the merger.
How AT&T got some civil rights groups and labor unions to mouth that same promise will remain one of my life's deeper mysteries, especially since the consolidation of two major carriers (and two major GSM carriers) would likely have resulted in job losses through the elimination of redundancies.

One former [Apple] executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
Similar stories could be told about almost any electronics company...

What my ideology tells me should be put aside at all times by an engagement with reality. That reality suggests a country veering fast into two countries, and one party, the GOP, proposing to accelerate the shift. I'd lean on the rudder right now somewhat toward getting revenues from those currently enjoying a boom, while the rest try slowly to recover from excessive debt. Not because I hate the successful, or despise the wealthy. But because that's the obvious way to stabilize the polity and economy. And, you know, I'm a conservative in part because I like political stability. Pity today's Republicans have never seen a stable politics they didn't want to smash up.

Few of us would want to live in a society without rules that keep our air and water clean; that give consumers the confidence to [invest in financial markets or to buy groceries. When new standards are proposed, opponents often claim an assault on business and free enterprise. Drug companies argued the bill creating the FDA would "destroy the sale of patent remedies." Automakers predicted a seatbelt mandate would destroy the] industry....The President of the American Bar Association denounced child labor laws as "a communistic effort to nationalize children"....

Companies adapt and standards often spark competition and innovation...[Steve Chu, my Secretary of Energy, reminded me how the government set modest, gradual energy efficiency targets a couple decades ago. Companies competed to hit these markers, and] hit them every time, and then exceeded them. [A] typical fridge now costs half as much and uses a quarter of the energy...It saves families and businesses billions of dollars.

If Twitter wants to be a "force for good" in areas like literacy and disease prevention—both touted as "Causes We Support"...—it can start by paying its hometown taxes in full, just like loads of less fortunate small businesses do. Not only is San Francisco's payroll tax less than half the rate of the personal income tax in fast-growing tech hotbed New York City, but San Francisco, like many other municipalities these days, is desperate for the cash. Despite deep cuts in prior years, it's facing a deficit of close to $380 million this year. The city faces the prospect of "more catastrophic cuts—rather than cutting to the bone we will likely have to actually cut the bone of city sevices," says Board of Supervisors president David Chiu...chief backer of Twitter's tax break in the desperate wake of the company's threats...[B]udget shortfalls are already felt in the police department, health services and transit, which all now face steeper cuts.

"We first had to change the law to where a private company can own a license...Then we got another law passed that said [the state can only issue one license. We] were the only ones that applied.” <br />
Simmons and [Waste Control Systems manipulated state and federal law to allow building a nuclear-waste disposal site in West Texas. Construction has been delayed for years because the site overlays the Oglalla Aquifer, which supplies water to] 1.9 million people in 9 states....<br />
Perry’s appointees on the [Environmental Quality commission voted 2 to 1 to license the WCS site; officials on a radioactive waste commission appointed by Perry allowed the site to accept nuclear waste from 34 other states in a] decision later ratified by the state legislature.... <br />
[The Texas official (and Perry appointee) who overruled his own scientists and approved the deal left government] to work as a lobbyist for Simmons. He says that no undue influence led to the favorable outcome for his new employer.

[Greeks] do not want the bail-out at all. They have already accepted [unfathomable cuts].... <br />
My mother [is nearly 70, worked all her life for the Archaeology Department of the Ministry of Culture, paid tax, national insurance and pension contributions for over 45 years, and now has had her pension cut.] She faces the same rampantly inflationary energy and food prices as the rest of Europe. <br />
A good friend’s grandad, Panagiotis K., fought a war 70 years ago—on the same side as the rest of Western democracy. He returned and worked 50 years in a shipyard, paid his taxes, built his pension. At the age of 87 he has had to move back to his village [to plant vegetables and keep] four chickens. So that he and his 83 year old wife might have something to eat....<br />
GPs and nurses have become so desperate that they ask people for money under the table in order to treat them, in what are meant to be free state hospitals....The Hippocratic oath violated out of despair, at the place of its inception.

David Rockefeller became [CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank in 1969 and] became a leading figure in (if not the originator of) Nixon's policy of engagement with the Soviet Union and China. Rockefeller writes, "Nixon] regarded broadening commercial intercourse with the Soviet Union an integral element in his policy of détente. The Soviet leadership, hungry for access to the modern technology and capital resources of the West, were eager to oblige, and the framework for a trade treaty was incorporated in the agreements signed at the 1972 Moscow Summit that inaugurated a "new era in Soviet-American relations." [A commission worked] out the details that would lead to most-favored nation (MFN) status for the Soviets. <br />
In 1973 Rockefeller opened up a Chase branch in Moscow, and Chase also became the first American bank to sign an agreement with [China during Rockefeller's visit there the same year]. His bank would help to openly prop up International Communism for the next decade and a half.

David Rockefeller became [CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank in 1969 and] became a leading figure in (if not the originator of) Nixon's policy of engagement with the Soviet Union and China. Rockefeller writes, "Nixon] regarded broadening commercial intercourse with the Soviet Union an integral element in his policy of détente. The Soviet leadership, hungry for access to the modern technology and capital resources of the West, were eager to oblige, and the framework for a trade treaty was incorporated in the agreements signed at the 1972 Moscow Summit that inaugurated a "new era in Soviet-American relations." [A commission worked] out the details that would lead to most-favored nation (MFN) status for the Soviets. <br />
In 1973 Rockefeller opened up a Chase branch in Moscow, and Chase also became the first American bank to sign an agreement with [China during Rockefeller's visit there the same year]. His bank would help to openly prop up International Communism for the next decade and a half.

Tables Turned: Bank Of America Pays Couple’s Legal Fees After Deputies Threaten It With Foreclosure via @thinkprogress

9...There’s [growth for everyone:] demographic, vertical, horizontal, circumferential...<br />
8...Once we [got] them to put Kraft Singles on their enchiladas, we knew their asses were ours....<br />
7...[Sugar consumption has yet to be definitively linked to dieabetes. We stand] with the salt and fossil fuel industries in demanding [practical science] that supports the bottom line! <br />
6...[We're opening up new doors for research in an underserved population. All] the attention will do those people good. <br />
5...[Why] leave population control in the hands of Planned Parenthood?.... <br />
4...The family that decays together, stays together. Well, except for the pieces that fall off. <br />
3....African-Americans, [you're next]! There’s plenty of sugar for everybody! <br />
2...[The mixed-race market?] You won’t believe some of the crazy ideas our Oreos people are coming up with! <br />
1....When you’re in the business of selling fake-flavored sugar water, you’ve pretty much checked your ethics at the door on the way in.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz...collected 2.7 million options in November 2008, about quadruple the number of options he had received the year before. <br />
The options gave the Starbucks CEO the right to buy, at a future date, 2.7 million of the latte giant’s shares at the low they hit in November 2008. For accounting purposes, Starbucks valued the total option grant to Schultz at $12.4 million. <br />
In the two and one-half years since then, Schultz has axed the jobs of 39,000 Starbucks workers and quadrupled the Starbucks share price. The 2008 option grant to Schultz, the Wall Street Journal noted last Tuesday, would, if redeemed today, add $76 million to the Schultz family fortune. <br />
Starbucks shares, despite their recent rise, are still running 5% under their price five years ago. In other words, Starbucks shareholders who bought their shares in 2006 are still swimming in the red, while tens of thousands of baristas are looking for work and Howard Schultz is admiring a colossal windfall.

5.6% of hospital patients in the US contract some form of health care-associated infections [(HAIs)—1.7 million preventable infections resulting] in over 99,000 deaths each year.<br />
[Hospital-born outbreak hijacks resources that could] be funnelled into research or providing better primary healthcare....[I]mmunocompromised children, such as cancer patients, premature babies and transplant patients...are particularly vulnerable to the horrors of HAIs[: "Precise definitions need to be established and] rigorous research needs to be performed…the expectation that adult criteria can be used to define, track and eliminate HAI in children is problematic"... <br />
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was joined by leaders of major hospitals, physicians, nurses and patient advocates when she announced the Partnerships for Patients initiative which hopes to avoid 60,000 deaths caused by preventable hospital injuries and complications, as well as save up to $35 billion, including $10 billion in Medicare.

Obscured in such Nuke vs. Coal vs. Gas vs. Whatever arguments, the truth is that there is only one benign energy source: efficiency [or] conservation. Conservation puts people to work in every job-craving community, keeps our money at home, structurally reduces every form of energy consumption, global warming and environmental impact, and de-funds tyrants and terrorists. But tragically, energy conservation lacks the one thing it most needs: the gigantic special-interest political machine that backs every major form of energy production. <br />
A rational free-market society would take two radical steps:<br />
• remove all subsidies for energy production (including government-provided nuclear-industry liability limits—without which there would be no nuclear industry...); <br />
• tax each energy source to cover the costs society now pays for its externalities (trillion-dollar wars, planetary destruction, hundreds of billions in health care costs for those dying and sick from coal and fossil fuels, etc.).

[The study doesn't prove salt helps diabetics live longer. Patients with lower sodium levels] were sicker and older...
"Although the authors used statistical models to try to 'correct' for these imbalances, it remains likely that the results are still confounded by them"...[Higher blood pressure was also] tied to longer survival..."which just isn't plausible"...
"[Reducing sodium has many effects, some good like reducing blood pressure, and others bad" R]educing sodium increases insulin resistance...the main problem in diabetes. It also ups the production of certain other hormones that have been linked to heart disease. "The impact of reducing sodium must be the sum total of all these physiological effects"...
[A] clinical trial comparing people told to eat less sodium to those who maintain their usual intake..."is surely safer, and probably cheaper than to ask 300 million Americans to reduce their sodium intake because of the hope that it will actually extend or improve life"...

On the left you have the "shared sacrifices" and "painful cuts" that the Republicans claim we must make to get our fiscal house in order. On the right, you can plainly see WHY these cuts are "necessary."

in Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev presides over the world’s largest oil reserves with an iron fist. Among his greatest hits: the convenient “suicides” of his top two political opponents a few months before a presidential “election.” The two men apparently shot themselves in the back of the head, then bound their own hands behind their backs and dropped into a ditch outside Almaty.... <br />
“In 2007, President Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, celebrated his 41st birthday in grand style...At a small venue in Almaty, he hosted a private concert with some of Russia’s biggest pop stars. The headliner, however, was Elton John, to whom he reportedly paid one million pounds for this one-time appearance.” How did he come up with all that coin? “Timur Kulibayev is currently the favored presidential son-in-law, on the Forbes 500 list of billionaires (as is his wife separately), and the ultimate controller of 90% of the economy of Kazakhstan,” states a January 2010 missive.

There are no “government unions,” just unions of private workers. And they have no interest in campaigning for higher taxes – they are unions of taxpaying citizens. They do push for better pay, benefits and working conditions, like private sector unions, but officials elected by American voters determine the number and size of public programs and therefore the ultimate cost of government. <br />
[The Heritage Foundation] also makes much of the fact that public unions lobby for various policies that conservatives don't like, and claims, yet again, that they do so with “taxpayer dollars.” That's false, as we know, but it is true of another group: private contractors. They routinely include a line-item billing the government for part of the money they spend on lobbying – they, rather than the unions, actually use taxpayer dollars to lobby for, as Heritage puts it, “legislation and ballot measures that raise taxes and spending.”

Teachers [get] fired, Pell grants for the poor [get] slashed, energy assistance for the needy is disappearing, other vital public services shriveling. Regulatory agencies don’t have the budgets to pay the people they need to enforce the law. Even if it wanted to the Securities and Exchange Commission couldn’t police Wall Street. <br />
[This] is precisely where Republicans want the nation to be. It sets them up perfectly to blame government, blame public employees, blame unionized workers. It lets them pit workers against one another, divide the Democratic base, and promote the false idea that we’re in a giant zero-sum game and the nation can’t afford to do more. <br />
It diverts attention from what’s happened at the top–so no one sees how well CEOs and Wall Street bankers are doing again, no one views the paybacks and tax giveaways engineered by their Republican patrons, and no one focuses on the tide of money flowing from the likes of billionaires Charles and David Koch into Republican coffers.

Right Wing politics and Fundamentalist religion made a devil’s bargain a long time ago. They would both work to undermine science, thereby rendering the population ever so more open to manipulation and control. This paves the way for unregulated industry (read as: unlimited profit) and for the mixing of temporal power with spiritual (read as: theocracy). Economic conservatism and social conservatism. The two banes of modern America’s existence. <br />
This is great news for the rest of world. As we become dumber and dumber and more technologically unsophisticated, we are unintentionally seceding the role of world leader to whoever can claim it first. Someone else will make it to Mars first. Someone else will invent the new, virus free, internet. Someone else will create the first quantum computer. Someone else will perfect nanotechnology. We’ll just be their customers. We’ll have terrible credit and won’t understand the instruction manual.

Studies by the Economic Policy Institute [and] University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee economists Keith Bender and John Heywood show clearly that public-sector employees are less well-compensated than comparably educated and experienced private-sector workers in Wisconsin.... <br />
There are 13 states with no collective bargaining rights for public workers; eight of them have larger budget shortfalls than does Wisconsin. In Texas, for example, a non-collective bargaining state whose low-tax, "open for business" economic policies are vaunted by the right, the state's deficit as a percentage of the total budget is over twice that of Wisconsin's... <br />
Walker is using the relatively modest fiscal strain facing Wisconsin as a pretext to roll back basic worker rights and undermine public employee unions as a political force...[B]eyond this indefensible demonization of public employees as the primary cause of the state's budgetary shortfall, Walker's plan makes no macroeconomic sense.

Despite growing public concern about the tragic consequences of Thalidomide, a sedative that was withdrawn from the market after being found to be a cause of serious birth defects, the drug and cosmetic industry opposed the Drug Industry Act of 1962, which required drug manufacturers to provide proof of the effectiveness and safety of their drugs before approval, required drug advertising to disclose accurate information about side effects, and stopped cheap generic drugs being marketed as expensive drugs under new trade names as new "breakthrough" medications. Edward Breck, CEO of John Breck, Inc. claimed that government regulation wasn't necessary because manufacturers would be "foolhardy not to carefully formulate and test the product to all practicable lengths before asking for consumer acceptance." <br />
[As corporate practices after regulation have clearly shown!—DMM]

Profit vs. people. Consumerism vs. conscience. Via @TheLightedBridg and Lori M.

Long famed for hiding money for everyone from Nazis and drug lords to spies and dictators, the Swiss government's banking arm has decided that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are just too hot even for it to handle. And so the PostFinance, which runs the country's banks, declared in early December that it had "ended its business relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Paul Assange" after accusing Mr. Assange of - gasp! - providing false information about his place of residence.... <br />
Should CIA agents, mafia bosses and other fellow Swiss banking customers who have likely been even less than forthright in their personal representations than Assange is alleged to have been also worry about the loyalty and discretion of their Swiss bankers?

The artificial hormone [increases painful and debilitating bovine] lameness and mastitis...[B]ecause it increases udder infections...it has greatly increased the use of antibiotics in the U.S. dairy industry. If you wanted to design a system to breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria, you'd be hard pressed to do better....
[A]ccording to Dr. Richard Burroughs, a veterinarian deeply familiar with rBGH[,] "It results in an increase of white blood cells...which means there's pus in the milk! [The antibiotic] leaves residues in the milk. It's all very serious"....
[Approval of rBGH was overseen by Michael R. Taylor, FDA] Deputy Commissioner of Policy from 1991-1994....Prior to holding that position, he was an attorney at King & Spaulding, Monsanto's law firm, [heading] the firm's "food and drug law" practice. After [greenlighting rBGH, he went to work] directly for Monsanto, as vice president and chief lobbyist....Today, Taylor again works for the FDA, now as Deputy Commissioner of Foods.

'As a kid, [Cohen] built computers, yammered on ham radios...took special trips to the electronics shops in Lower Manhattan with his dad[, and] pored over the RadioShack catalog the day it arrived, studying up on what was then cutting-edge technology—reel-to-reel tape decks, fax machines—and...pages of arcane electronic components.
'Cohen bought this store in 2003 after 25 years as a project manager at companies like Hughes Aircraft and Hewlett-Packard. Housed in a strip mall...it is not among RadioShack’s 4,470 corporate-owned stores but one of about 1,400 franchised dealerships. In exchange for using the RadioShack name, Cohen [must] buy a certain amount of his inventory from the company. Otherwise, he has a lot of leeway. And he has used it to fashion his shop into something like the eccentric, mad-scientist RadioShacks he grew up with. But he knows that he’s largely on his own in this, fighting a battle for the soul of the company that’s pretty much been decided everywhere else.'

'Standard Oil jump-started Progressive Era trust-busting. Sinclair Oil’s [Teapot Dome kickback scheme] led to the first conviction and imprisonment of a presidential cabinet member (Harding’s interior secretary)...The Arab oil embargo of the early 1970s and the Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 sped the conservation movement and search for alternative fuels....
'This [is] a Teddy Roosevelt pivot-point for Obama, who shares many of that president’s...convictions. But Obama can’t embrace his inner TR [while still] in thrall to the supposed wisdom of the nation’s meritocracy, too willing to settle for incremental pragmatism as a goal, and too inhibited...to embrace bold words and bold action. If he is to wield the big stick of reform against BP and the other powerful interests that have ripped us off, he will have to tell the big story with no holds barred....
'[Obama has the power to fix] his presidency. Should he do so...soon, he’ll still have a real chance to mend a broken country as well.'

'In two separate [prior disasters], 30 BP workers have been killed, and more than 200 seriously injured...BP has admitted to breaking...environmental and safety laws and committing outright fraud. BP paid $373 million in fines to avoid prosecution...[I]n the last 3 years, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas...accounted for 97% of the "egregious, willful" violations [deemed by OSHA, representing] "intentional disregard for the requirements of the [law], or...plain indifference to employee safety and health"....
'In 2007, a BP...spill poured 200,000 gallons of crude oil into...pristine Alaskan wilderness. [I]nvestigators discovered BP was aware of corrosion along the [leaking pipeline but did not respond properly....
'P]rice gouging affected as many as 7 million...customers who depended on propane to heat their homes and cost...consumers $53 million...[F]or a company that reported profits of $14 billion in 2009, [even record] fines represent a small fraction of the cost of doing business.'

May 18, 2010 4:04 PM
'Kelly Cobiella reports that a CBS News team was threatened with arrest by Coast Guard officials in the Gulf of Mexico who said they were acting under the authority of British Petroleum.'

'Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields. We feed our children Bt...cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies. 'Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto's GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity. Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated...high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto traits). "[E] ssentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company"...Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70% of US food contains GM traits. 'Meat:...Monsanto steroids bulk up animals--more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel? 'Poultry:...USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge as [crop fertilizer].'

'“The majority blazes through our precedents,” [dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens] wrote, “overruling or disavowing a body of case law” that included seven decisions.
'Justice Stevens, who served in the Navy during World War II, reached back to those days to show the depth of his outrage at the majority’s conclusion that the government may not make legal distinctions based on whether a corporation or a person was doing the speaking.
'“Such an assumption,” he wrote, “would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders.”
'The reference to Tokyo Rose was probably lost on many of Justice Steven’s readers. But the concluding sentence of what may be his last major dissent could not have been clearer.
'“While American democracy is imperfect,” he wrote, “few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”'

[China held diplomatic discussions where they, as holders of] a $2 trillion mortgage on our Treasury, raised concerns about the cost of [health care reform]. Would our nervous Chinese landlords have an interest in buying the White House for an opponent of government spending such as Gov. Palin?....[1994] brought Newt Gingrich to power in a GOP takeover of the Congress...[In crucial swing races, Democrats fell] to a flood of last-minute attack ads funded by [to the tune of $25 million by a front PAC for Triad Inc.. a suspected] front for the ultra-right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers and their private petroleum company...Had the corporate connection been proven, the Kochs...could have faced indictment under federal election law. As of today....Polluter-Americans, Pharma-mericans, Bank-Americans and Hedge-Americans [can legitimately] manipulate campaigns while hidden behind corporate veils...[Future elections may] come down to a 3-way battle between China, Saudi Arabia and Goldman Sachs.

1959 -- Advertisers rewrite history

On the dramatic anthology series "Playhouse 90," an episode titled "Judgment at Nuremberg" has all references to gas chambers eliminated from its re-enactment of the Nazi trials. This is done at the behest of the show's slightly sensitive sponsor, the American Gas Association.

'They knew precisely what to do with people who abused them. They may not have been liberal, they may not have finished high school, but they were far more grounded than most of those I studied with across the Charles River. They would have felt awkward, and would have been made to feel awkward, at the little gatherings of progressive and liberal intellectuals at Harvard, but you could trust and rely on them. I went on to spend two decades as a war correspondent. The qualities inherent in good soldiers or Marines, like the qualities I found among those boxers, are qualities I admire—self-sacrifice, courage, the ability to make decisions under stress, the capacity to endure physical discomfort, and a fierce loyalty to those around you, even if it puts you in greater danger. If liberals had even a bit of their fortitude we could have avoided this mess. But they don’t. So here we are again, begging Obama to be Obama. He is Obama. Obama is not the problem. We are.'

'Half an hour from the bottling plant was Rakiraki, a small town with a square of dusty shops and a marketplace advertising "Coffin Box for Sale—Cheapest in Town"...Rakiraki water "has been deemed unfit for human consumption," and groceries were stocked with Fiji Water going for 90 cents a pint—almost as much as it costs in the US. Rakiraki has experienced the full range of Fiji's water problems—crumbling pipes, a lack of adequate wells, dysfunctional or flooded water treatment plants, and droughts that are expected to get worse with climate change. Half the country has at times relied on emergency water supplies, with rations as low as four gallons a week per family; dirty water has led to outbreaks of typhoid and parasitic infections. Patients have reportedly had to cart their own water to hospitals, and schoolchildren complain about their pipes spewing shells, leaves, and frogs. Some Fijians have taken to smashing open fire hydrants and bribing water truck drivers...'

AHA made sweeping statements that are not supported by the research, while ignoring landmark studies, which don’t support their views....[The AHA]'s key rationale for promoting omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, is because of their ability to lower blood cholesterol, when eaten in the place of saturated fats. (Keep in mind that one out of every two people with heart disease has a normal blood cholesterol level.) Furthermore, the AHA asserts that if Americans were to lower their current omega-6 fat, their heart health would suffer. Omega-6 fat intake has skyrocketed in the last century, so it would seem that we should see a dramatic lowering of heart disease in the USA, yes? No. The incidence of cardiovascular disease has increased in parallel with the increase in linoleic acid intakes in many countries. Linoleic acid is the most commonly eaten omega-6 fatty acid. Notably, people who have died from heart disease have higher blood levels of the omega-6 fat, arachidonic acid...[Okuyama].