SAR #15273

Fantasy-based ideologies have real-world consequences.

Marketing Skills: GlaxoSmithKline fined $3bn after bribing doctors to increase the unauthorized prescription of antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin to children and to conceal safety problems with the asthma treatment Advair. It is not research that drives the high price of drugs, but the need to build reserves against being caught.

Quoted: “Domestic police have devolved into criminal gangs of liars, thugs and assassins. Hostile to the public they serve and the laws they are supposed to uphold.”

Confidential Informant: UBS, which ratted out its co-conspirators in the LIBOR fraud investigation, is reported to be cooperating with Swiss authorities in an anti-trust investigation into manipulation of the prices for precious metals. UBS has entered a plea agreement that will let it off with a much lighter fine and no criminal convictions.

Seems Like Old Times: A Saudi air strike in Yemen “apparently by mistake” hit a wedding party, killing at least 130 non-combatants.

Blow Some My Way: A national multicenter study by McGill University Health Center concluded that there is “no evidence of harmful effects on cognitive function, or blood tests among cannabis consumers and we observed a significant improvement in their levels of pain, symptom distress, mood and quality of life"

Datapoint: The average American earns less today than in 1975.

Seems Like Old Times, Part II: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now are allowing borrowers to count the income of their live-with children or parents to get mortgages that they cannot afford.

Professionals: House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (Orphan-UT) opened the Republican witch hunt of Planned Parenthood by blaming its funding for his parents death from cancer. Then Jim Jordan (Grand Inquisitor-OH) interrupted Planned Parenthood's president 19 times in 5 minutes, mostly by repeating the same question.

Never-Neverland: If all the promises made by all the nations of the world to cut carbon emissions are kept, the Earth will only heat up another 6° Fahrenheit – which will be enough to produce catastrophic famine and widespread extinction of plants and animals. Whatever feel-good agreement is made in Paris this December will not do the job, because businesses and the rich think that it will cost them money.

Porn O'Graph: Half-off sale.