By The Numbers - part the ninety third

As usual, Hate filled, Petty, Paranoid, Demented, Dictator Don lies about the results of 2024. Most often, that he 'won' the popular vote. He didn't. Here's the numbers:

total vote:    155,238,302  
Trump:          77,302,580 
Everybody else: 77,935,722

So, he lies, as usual.

I Won't Cum in Your Mouth. I Promise.

Here's part of a note from Feuerstein:

Pfizer $PFE strikes deal with administration to reduce some prices, avoid tariffs for three years

So, I guess that even Big Pharma is populated by craven idiots? What are the odds that Hate filled, Petty, Paranoid, Demented, Dictator Don and his merry band of Fascists will abide? 0.

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul - Again

Long time reader may remember what happened the first time Bone Spur Samurai^© decided to dunk on Xi: Evangelical Reactionary Radical Retrograde Right Wingnut Farmers got bailed out to the tune of 32⁺ billion Bongo Bucks in 2020 alone.

Yeah, the Free Market. And, he's said he'll do it again. China's literally stopped buying good old USofA soybeans. Nada. Not a one.

Of course, all those Blue states that make something, as opposed to the extractive industries (and farming is exactly that) in Red authoritarian states, will end up footing the bill. Again.

Thought For The Day - 25 September 2025

Well... this will likely go down, so far and it could get worse (as Curly said, "day ain't over yet"), as the biggest shitstorm that Hate filled, Petty, Paranoid, Demented, Dictator Don has yet brought down on his own self.

The Comey indictment, by his newly minted U.S. Attorney (insurance lawyer in real life). Now a 100% tariff on drugs. Killing healthcare After the mid-terms was cute, but doubling the price of drugs next week? He's as dumb as a sack of hair.

Testing Testing

In the world of Drugs, in the USofA the FDA is the gatekeeper. Until the Ascension of Hate filled, Petty, Paranoid, Demented, Dictator Don, that has meant Gold Standard placebo controlled, Phase III clinical trials. Now, it is not widely understood that FDA seldom interferes with the conduct of clinical trials by drug companies. In almost all cases, if the Sponsor (aka, drug company) proposes to do something that endangers patients (or is discovered in the course of a trial), then FDA will step in. Otherwise, FDA is happy to let bidnezz piss away money on compounds/trials that are doomed from the gitgo.

Again, in general, final phase (III) trials are almost always placebo controlled, blinded exercises. During the trial, no one involved with the trial (who has some skin in the game) knows what the patients are getting. There's a sub-culture in the drug biz, the Contract Research Organization, which mitigates between the FDA and Sponsors. IOW, while a Sponsor pays for, and usually, designs the trial, it's the CRO which carries out the trial separate from the Sponsor. Often enough, there's also (by various names) a Data Monitoring authority (again separate, but reporting to the Sponsor) which has continuous access to data. The DM may find issues, and will recommend to the Sponsor to modify/halt the trial; usually for futility, but on rare occasions, wonderful results. But the DM can only recommend. The Sponsor is supposed to notify FDA of any Adverse Events as they happen. But that can, at times, by contentious.

Which brings us to this X post from Feuerstein:

The validity of external control arms like the one used by Uniqure is still hotly debated, even as regulators, including the FDA, allow them under certain circumstances. It's been lost to memory, but recall that the AMT-130 study started with a true, sham-surgery control arm that showed no benefit for the gene therapy. It was only after the company reconfigured the study and started using natural history comparators was a benefit observed.

For those who find that gibberish, here's what it means. From the beginning, the Sponsor established a placeco controlled, blinded trial. For some part of that period of the trial, it became known that the therapy fucked the dog. The Sponsor: "what the fuck do we do now!!!!" The answer: 'Will no one rid me of this turbulent control group?' And the Sponsor did. Viola!!! Success!!

Feuerstein's post was, well addendum, to the report that the trial results reported recently were stat sig. That's good. Drug companies, with more aggression recently, have been trying to scrap placebo controled, blinded, PII trials (more so in some areas than others; that's another episode) where the Compound/Therapy is compared to some placebo equivalent (so far as patients and practitioners know) to comparing to some data set representing historical experience/drug/therapy. All the patients get the Therapy. Their response is compared to this historical record. Of course, it does matter what that historical record consists of.

And, it's also worth mentioning: the trial was merely a PI/II trial of a gene therapy; such 'drugs' have a different profile from 'normal' drugs. This is not normally grounds for approval. Huntington's Disease is particularly troublesome.

Feuerstein was just reminding, mostly retail plungers (not the Pros, who mostly know better), to be vewy, vewy cawful believing this result.

By The Numbers - part the ninety second

You want to know who's responsible for political violence? Well, Thomas B. Edsell has gathered the numbers. To the surprise of no one with a brain, it's the MAGAnauts.

He lists many, many studies. The Right Wingnuts come out on top. By a mile. But this is how he writes the punchline:

At 7 p.m. on Sept. 10, the day Kirk was killed, Laura Loomer posted on X:

Charlie Kirk's death will not be in vain. I will be spending my night making everyone I find online who celebrates his death Famous, so prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined if you are sick enough to celebrate his death. I'm going to make you wish you never opened your mouth.

If Trump, Vance, Miller and Loomer have their way, America will take another step toward becoming a McCarthyite state with the ever-present danger that your colleagues and friends will report your offhand quick-reaction social media posts to government authorities.

As terrible as the killing of Charlie Kirk was, this way of honoring it is repellent.

Just what Petty, Paranoid, Demented, Dictator Don wants: to out do Kim, Putin, Erdogan, and the rest. And slurping up lots of Bongo Bucks for him and his. It's not just an autocracy, it's a kleptocracy. Buy one for yourself today!!

I Told You So - 15 September 2025

What a monument to Tax Day!! Some Right Wingnut psychopath on Fox said the following

Brian Kilmeade, a longtime host on Fox News, apologized on Sunday for comments he made on a broadcast last week in which he proposed killing mentally ill homeless people by "involuntary lethal injection."

"Just kill 'em," he said.

I guess that doesn't apply to Right Wingnut sociopaths?

If you believe he's really sorry, I've got some nicely naturally watered farm land in Arizona at a good price. You can grow lots of soybeans.