Game Change; Get Tough; Sign a Petition

GAME CHANGE

UN. BE. LEAVE-ABLE. Wait until you read this book. To think John Edwards got as far as he did. Appalling. And there’s plenty in the book about everybody else. On so many pages, you are watching the events we all saw from our side of the TV screen, only now you’re seeing them from the inside.

I don’t think there’s much risk of your putting down Game Change once you start reading. But don’t, because near the end you get to the parts on Senator McCain and Governor Palin. I think even if you voted for them – and it’s worth noting that nearly 60 million people did – you may feel more than a little relieved they did not win.

Take the financial meltdown. Remember? When Senator McCain temporarily suspended his campaign to come to Washington to assert his leadership? This was not some silliness about Obama’s not wearing a lapel pin or McCain’s shouting obscenities at his wife – this was a true crisis that came close to wrecking our world.

The authors recount those events from the inside and then (page 393) offer the perspective of one of the insiders:

Jim Wilkinson, a long-time Republican operative, served as [Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson’s chief of staff during the crisis, and his impression of the candidates could hardly have been clearer. ‘I’m a pro-life, pro-gun, Texas Republican,’ said Wilkinson. ‘I worked all eight years for Bush. I helped sell the Iraq war. I was in the Florida recount. And I wrote a letter to John McCain asking for my five hundred dollar contribution back . . .’ To his amazement, Wilkinson determined that he would be voting for Obama.

FRANK RICH: TIME TO GET TOUGH

Really.

ALAN GRAYSON: HAS A PETITION

‘The same five judges today who have overturned 103 years of settled law and relied upon no precedent to do so,’ says the Florida Congressman – ‘these are the same judges who gave us George Bush for eight years. They have their own agenda and it`s time we stopped pretending otherwise. The Supreme Court has become utterly politicized and the result of that is what you see here today. … Today, the court, in effect, decided only corporations have constitutional rights. This will lead to a drowning flood of money from corporations in exchange for favors. And it basically institutionalizes and legalizes bribery on the largest scale imaginable. Corporations will now be able to reward the politicians that play ball with them and will be able – they will be able to beat to death the politicians that don`t.” Read more; sign his petition?

DCTH

So Thursday, I suggested this as a possible third egg for our speculative little drug stock basket. It had closed the night before at $5.37. Friday, it dropped to $4.61.

“I think DCTH was down Friday,” guru offers, “because ONXX’s Nexavar showed no statistical benefit in a 400-patient trial when given with or without chemoembolization of the liver in liver cancer. Chemoembolization is a kind of precursor to DCTH’s procedure – it adds high dose chemo plus a chemical to block the artery so the chemo is forced through the tumor. However, eventually the chemo ends up exiting the liver via a vein. Thus, there is a limit to how much chemo you can give with this procedure. The DCTH method can deliver 20 to 50 times higher doses of chemo than can chemoembolization. It’s really amazing. Chemoembolization shows some shrinkage of the tumor in 20%-40% of patients with melanoma metastatic to the liver. DCTH shows 20% complete disappearance and 60% partial shrinkage – a MUCH more dramatic result. The data are due out in April and I feel as confident as one can be at this stage that they will show the success that ONXX did not.”

☞ But one never knows, so – as usual – bet no more on this than you can truly afford to lose without recrimination. I can live with their canceling Dirty, Sexy Money. I can live (barely) with paying $1.50 for a hotel newsstand pack of Dentyne Ice if I’ve forgotten to take one of my 90-cent packs from home. But your recriminations?

Tomorrow: More reason to get tough.