| Latest Commentary: | Volume V, Number 135 |
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HHS Secretary Leavitt Sets up Medicare Drug Price Fight -- Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told reporters yesterday that the government shouldn’t negotiate Medicare drug prices with the drug makers. It wasn’t that he objected to the better deal taxpayers could get, or so he said. He didn’t like the idea that it could lead to something more, “It’s a surrogate for a much larger issue, which is really government-run health care.” Someone should tell him who just won the elections.
Blair’s Guildhall Speech Expects Too Much from Iran, Syria -- Prime Minister Tony Blair made his last Guildhall speech as top dog in Britain on Monday. Looking not-quite-James-Bond in white tie and tails, he laid out the new British policy in the Mid-East, which was set by voters in New York, Indiana and Montana. He believes that a rapprochement with Iran and Syria could lead to a settlement of the Iraq-Nam mess. This is best-case scenario thinking at its worst. Iran and Syria can’t force anyone in Iraq to do anything, and even if they could, Mr. Blair’s approach begs the question of whether either would want to settle affairs in Mesopotamia. US and Eurozone Growth Slows, Japan’s Rises -- One of the problems with globalization is the risk that the interlocked economies of the world could all stumble together. The word “contagion” applied only in medicine until the 1997 currency crises in East Asia and Russia cropped up. Counter-intuitively, economic growth usually depends on the various big economies of the world being out of phase. Thanks to Japan’s surprisingly strong third quarter growth, that’s exactly where the world is at the moment. Bond Would Never Play Texas Hold ‘Em -- When the next James Bond film opens, the first of the Bond books will get ruined again by the movies. Ian Lancaster Fleming’s Casino Royale came out in 1953 and introduces the reader to the world’s most famous and glamorous spy. Bond, in both print and on screen, is posh, but too rough to be a genuine toff. This film will, however, wreck that image as it substitutes Texas Hold ‘Em for baccarat in the vital casino confrontation with Le Chiffre. Next, he’ll eat peanut butter and processed cheese while drinking Gatorade. © Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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