There is a very special place in hell for Martin Shkreli because he raised the price of a life saving drug from $13.50 to $750. a pill.

And although he is the son of Beelzebub, he’s not the real problem.

The real problem is that people like him can hold life saving drugs hostage from anyone who doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Because freedom.

The problem is that health care should never have been subservient to capitalistic greed.

Don’t lecture me that the high prices of drugs pay for research.  That doesn’t happen. The high prices of drugs get stored in Swiss bank accounts.

America is no longer the leader in drug research.  I take six drugs for a progressive, fatal disease.  (No pity allowed. I’m whipping its butt.)  Of those 6 drugs, four were discovered in Europe.  In fact, I was buying one of the drugs over the counter in Mexico for a full year before it was approved by the FDA here.  It saved my life.

But here’s the part that makes Shkreli especially a turd.

Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

That truly is a death panel. Where’s the Republican outrage?

Shkreli says he’s trying to improve the drug.  Medical doctors say the drug doesn’t need improving.  It works if people can get it.

That’s a hissy fit.  Some little punk kid who screwed another company by siphoning off profits can letting people die because he can. We let him do that. We even encourage it.

Bernie Sanders is right.  We must nationalize health care.

I predicted it this morning over breakfast and, sure ’nuff, Walker is out.

And he was supposed to be Mr. Viable.

So, we can sit back and wait while Donald Trump knocks them off one at a time.

This is such fun.  Who is next?  Madam Swami Juanita says it will be …

Bobby Jindal.

by Primo Encarnación y Hachecristo

One of the great mysteries of the 2015 campaign season is how a pediatric neurosurgeon with hands as gifted as Dr. Ben Carson’s – so gifted, they made them into not one, but TWO movies (one for each hand?), each creatively named “Gifted Hands” – could have turned into the dull-witted, hate-spewing moron near the top of the GOP polls, second only to the white, dull-witted, hate-spewing moron at the top of the GOP polls.

But now, exclusive to Juanita Jean’s WMDBS, we have the answer.

Carson has long been a leading advocate and practitioner of hemispherectomy. In order to control otherwise uncontrollable seizures, he literally cuts out, disconnects, disables or otherwise de-activates fully half of the brain. In past centuries, this was called “getting religion.” But here in the 21^st Century, all that is passé, because we have frickin’ laser beams.

Carson – himself an angry, bitter, rage-filled young man – turned to religion in his teens as a way to shut off his darkness. But as he got older, and richer, but no more white, he found the rage returning. So he locked himself in his lab, way up in the tower of Castle d’ Oreo, atop Mt. Aphor, and studied, and thought, and prayed.

Carson had observed over and over in his career that the human brain had a remarkable capacity for regeneration, of sorts. Destroyed neural pathways are bypassed naturally, with new pathways growing to replace the old. This ability, called neuroplasticity, along with the ability of the remaining hemisphere to take over jobs that belonged to its counterpart, led Carson to believe that he could sublimate his rage, self-abnegation and general feelings of inadequacy through surgery, as well as more prayer.

So he set his neuro-phaser to “stunned,” handed it to his humpbacked manservant, Jindal, and ordered him to aim carefully. After hitting several other things including the wall (scarred), a cage full of turtles (lobotomized), and himself (no effect), Jindal finally focused on his master and pushed “fricassee.”

It was a brilliant success, at first. Carson became calm to the point of catatonia, and his speech slowed down so much the lobotomized turtles got annoyed, but otherwise, Carson felt emboldened, super-human, even, dare-he-say, Presidential. “Me too,” piped Jindal.

But Carson had not counted on the double effects of the left-brain-ectomy, decoupled from a right-brain riddled with seculaphobia. (The rats he’d experimented with were atheists.) Everything was fine until, invited to address a prayer breakfast, Carson suddenly found himself spewing the most ridiculous jabberwocky imaginable. Suddenly, instead of being the smartest guy in the room, he found that he’d lost all capacity for rational thought. But it felt GOOD. It felt EMPOWERING. It felt…

BLANCHED.

Thus, the good man who was Dr. Carson, surgical superhero, was sublimated by a new super-villain identity, Reverend Hyde: racist, narcoleptic, sexist, neocon, uberChristian, homophobic Republican candidate for President and all-around evil former-genius, raging in slow-motion at all the liberal kids trampling the lawn of theocracy.

Max Horton is 91 years old, lives in Florida, and apparently has been grumpy since about 1953.

An Avon Park senior is charged with attempted murder after allegedly threatening to kill and shooting at some landscapers who apparently sprayed grass clippings on his car, authorities said.

An argument between the pair turned violent when Horton allegedly pulled out a handgun, ordered Hendrix to get on his knees and told him he was going to kill him.

He then fired a shot at Hendrix, but missed. Fortunately, another landscaper jumped Horton, wrestled the gun from him, and held him down until the police arrived. From the looks of things, Horton put up a fight and lost.

But they couldn’t take him to the hospital because …

Horton was initially taken to Highlands Regional Medical Center for treatment following the dispute, according to the Sheriff’s Office. He could not be taken to Florida Hospital because he allegedly made threats to hospital staff previously in September 2013, reportedly saying he had a gun in his vehicle and that they would be sorry if he went to get it.

And he still had a gun.

Way to go, Florida.

Sarcasm is not as popular a trait in world leaders as you would suspect.

Got that, Bobby?

I think the Koch Brothers have adopted the government of Texas.

Or maybe they are having s-e-x with all of them.

It’s hard to tell.

(Click the little one to see the big one.)

And don’t forget Louie!

And probably what they are having with Louie is kinda like a seeing a Stephen King movie – you pay money to be scared about what will happen next.

Thank to Alfredo for the heads up.