Happy and safe Thanksgiving. Get your safe and effective H1N1 vaccine when it's available.
Gail Collins on the Obama Turkey pardon:
The turkey-pardoning is supposed to be a long-running national tradition, but it officially only goes back to George (the Good One) Bush and 1989. Since Thanksgiving is a holiday that’s particularly rich in long-running traditions, 20 years barely counts as an impulsive gesture.
If we want a political tradition, we can do better. Let’s all just gather around the family computer and watch that video of Sarah Palin discussing Thanksgiving in front of a bloody turkey abattoir.
It's now official: So in vogue are attacks on President Obama that even his proclamation calling the nation to a day of Thanksgiving has become the focus of criticism.
As a fully licensed pundit, I have the authority to weigh in here ... but I demur. Oh, I could sling opinions about every one of the events cited above — some were unfortunate — but it would matter only if I could discern a pattern that illuminates Obama's presidency. The most obvious pattern, however, is the media's tendency to get overwrought about almost anything.
Nick Kristof on religion:
This year is different, with a crop of books that are less combative and more thoughtful. One of these is "The Evolution of God," by Robert Wright, who explores how religions have changed — improved — over the millennia. He notes that God, as perceived by humans, has mellowed from the capricious warlord sometimes depicted in the Old Testament who periodically orders genocides.
(In 1 Samuel 15:3, the Lord orders a mass slaughter of the Amalekite tribe: "Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child." These days, that would earn God an indictment before the International Criminal Court.)
By calculating the difference between the consumption of holiday goods (e.g., jewelry, but not gasoline) in December as opposed to November and January, you get a rough estimate of Christmas spending. Waldfogel's conservative estimate is that in 2007, Americans spent $66 billion on gifts and produced $12 billion less satisfaction than would have been produced if the recipients had spent the $66 billion on themselves.
Satisfaction by the numbers? Bah, humbug.
AP:
There's no evidence that the swine flu vaccine is causing any serious side effects, U.S. health officials said Wednesday, in their first report on the safety of the new vaccine.
Vaccines are in the class of biological drugs, which are expensive and difficult to produce, but that makes them less vulnerable to generic competition from weaker manufacturers. Moreover, with blockbuster drugs harder to come by, the success of Wyeth's pediatric pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar, which now generates $3 billion plus in annual sales, proved that vaccines could be profitable.
It must be a conspiracy. Read the article for a look at the future of vaccines. See also Rob Stein in the WaPo and one from the WSJ.
