A Spirited Perfect Ten

1023

1023

Provocateur, Rancanteur, Plaisanter, du Jour
WDW1974 said:
Besides, by now, surely TWDC has released photos of Robert A. Iger and Thomas Staggs basking with their Chinese brothers and sisters at the Shanghai Disneyland Resort and The Disney Store in Shanghai, right?

We can talk about that. And how wrong everything my narrative has been telling you for ... months ... years?

C'mon, prove me wrong. ...Oh, what's that you can't?

See, that's because what you fail to grasp (or simply refuse because you don't understand what is going on or being discussed or it just doesn't fit your world view) is that Disney is being puppeteered by the Chinese Communist Party to the point where not only does China call the shots on what goes on in their country, but they are also actively dictating how Disney releases information and what that is HERE IN THE USA!

And that is what Ben Fritz and Brooks Barnes and everyone else in the financial press simply ignore because that's how it's played.
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Other than Mr. Fritz, to whom should I direct inquiries about the absence of Mr. Iger in all the PR photos from China?

*1023*
 
WDW1974

WDW1974

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
THIS is what the Disney Parks Blog released on Shanghai, FYI: (no pics of Bob or Tom, because Disney wasn't allowed to do so ... no video of Bob or Tom, because Disney wasn't allowed to ... copy that wasn't simply read by Disney Legal before Bland Thomas Smith put his name on it, but using the language of the CCP in it ... ''our leaders'')

http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/bl...d-storybook-castle-at-shanghai-disney-resort/
 
Cesar R M

Cesar R M

Well-Known Member
photoginit said:
I still don't know how they are gonna pull off Civil War in one movie. My biggest complaint is how rushed some things were and disjointed because Whedon had to cut stuff to get down to 2 1/2 hours in Age of Ultron. Civil War is such a complex story unless they plan on doing some time jumps in the movie. This can't just happen over a few weeks.
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Agree with this.
Thats the primary bad feel I got from Ultron.. the scenes were jumping back and forth and some didn't make much sense. They always felt like there was something missing. And the Whedon comment was the confirmation of that.
The question is.. WHY.
If they could make a "meet joe black" 3+ hours boring movie. Why they cant do that in a top tier tent pole movie?

Phil12 said:
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A wild Bob appear!
Was this photo released publicly?
 
Bairstow

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
lazyboy97o said:
China gains nothing by taking the park. If they just wanted a park they could have hired plenty of talented people to build an amazing park. They want Disney involved.
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They wanted Disney involved.
If the intel in this forum is accurate, that situation has evolved.

Not a perfect metaphor for Iger in China, but...

 
Nemo14

Nemo14

Well-Known Member
Mike S

Mike S

Well-Known Member
Phil12 said:
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mind_blown.gif
 
Phil12

Phil12

Well-Known Member
Cesar R M said:
Agree with this.
Thats the primary bad feel I got from Ultron.. the scenes were jumping back and forth and some didn't make much sense. They always felt like there was something missing. And the Whedon comment was the confirmation of that.
The question is.. WHY.
If they could make a "meet joe black" 3+ hours boring movie. Why they cant do that in a top tier tent pole movie?


A wild Bob appear!
Was this photo released publicly?
Click to expand...
http://www.businesswire.com/news/ho...ens-Largest-Store-World-Shanghai#.VV0142fJBEY
 
PhotoDave219

PhotoDave219

Well-Known Member
ford91exploder said:
A box of Disney popcorn and a mass spectrometer should provide the desired answers, Chromatography would be cheaper and might be a better analytical technique
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Well Disney popcorn is Yummy. What better to eat while watching Iger flounder in China.

WDW1974 said:
C'mon guys/gals, I spent nine hours at what seemed like a third world health facility today dealing with the insanity of what the ignorant believe is the best healthcare system in the world and I don't want to read about it here or read about popcorn (unless it's the those kewl baskets that Disney sells for a profit of approximately 1,900.887,710% or all the flavors they have at TDR!)
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Not quite sure how we got on that topic other than from last night.... I for one would love to know how ODF cooks its popcorn. I can think of $800 Million reasons why. In fact, I'd love to know what kind of Popcorn the Board of Directors would be munching on when they call Bobby into the offices and ask him how was China and where the heck those $800M are.
 
WDW1974

WDW1974

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
1023 said:
Other than Mr. Fritz, to whom should I direct inquiries about the absence of Mr. Iger in all the PR photos from China?

*1023*
Click to expand...

It is more than just the photos. Those just drive the point home so glaringly. Understand, things didn't go off as planned this week (I'll add details shortly) ... understand, all of the other things that have been discussed that aren't simply odd or just things some of us are overreacting or reading into, they speak to the terrible deal Iger signed to be able to stick his -ick or I mean stick ... like flag pole into the Chinese Mainland. He has failed, miserably.

He opened a 'flagship' store in the financial district of Shanghai today and yet couldn't be bothered to show up. Why do you think that is? And why would a reporter covering Disney not want to know?

So, sure, contact him or Brooks Barnes or any major writer who covers Disney corporate and ask them why they aren't asking these questions.
 
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jakeman

jakeman

Well-Known Member
AEfx said:
Nope. It has to do with pharmaceutical companies, patents, and profits on one side - destructive, but not "evil" - it's the nature of the entire industry, unfortunately. The goal of the companies that make medicine, just like insurance, is profit not better health. As corporations, they simply have no choice in the matter or they would be accountable to the stockholders.

On another side, it's regulators and lawmakers who don't understand the topics they are legislating, which is so often the case - with medical, technology, or pretty much any other topic that requires expertise that gets delivered by paid representatives of one specific viewpoint (lobbyists).

And on yet another, where too many doctors are just uninterested in patients experience, more interested in folks taking a regimen of pharmaceuticals on a daily basis, and puts all their stock into the latest set of opinions in whatever study is prominent at the moment, the "bandwagon" mentality. Particularly when in this case the effectiveness studies were flawed from the start (see below). This is what led us to decades of a obsession about cholesterol in foods that we only recently (and without much hubris) found out actually was largely pointless (your cholesterol is not generally affected long term by the foods you consume).

So no, not "evil" - not even a conspiracy - just a bunch of different folks acting in self-interest, which in this case worked together without any coordination necessary - because everyone who had a place at the table had their own agenda, and the folks who actually are affected by it had no voice in the matter, and their health/quality of life was completely marginalized by people with little or no knowledge of the disease.




It's obviously a very complex topic, but here are the highlights. I was admittedly being a bit glib by blaming it all on the EPA - as I explained above, it was all the folks advising them. It mostly centers around asthmatic inhalers and CFC's, which is why the EPA was involved. The EPA regulations that resulted halved the effectiveness of the medications by compromising their delivery method, and the reformulations it required led to a massive increase in the cost of the medications and new patents all around to be exploited financially for decades.

The problem was, everyone else who became involved acted in their personal interests and the patients who depend on life saving medication were completely marginalized. One congressman, way too late, unfortunately, tried to stop the final blow - but the damage had already been done and since everyone is making more money than ever now on asthmatics (tens of billions a year in the US alone), it's not going to change.

* In the 1970's and 1980's, asthmatics were largely treated with what is now retroactively being called "rescue" medications, which were once daily medications - the inhalers you see folks use, and oral steroids. Large amounts of steroids (particularly one called Slo-Bid, which is no longer regularly prescribed for asthma because of it's copious side effects). The inhalers were extremely effective, inexpensive, and asthma was easily manageable. Most patients grew out of needing steroids and simply needed the inhaler to maintain their lifestyle.

* In the 1990's, the medical community decided that inflammation was the true enemy, and for awhile before COPD exploded as a diagnosis with their own new industry of pharmaceuticals, went so far as to claim that using the "rescue" inhalers as they now decided they were, we causing lung scarring and tried to scare folks with that. You still find some resources that postulate that, but when you start researching you realize just how the thoughts about how to treat asthma have just flip flopped so much over the years as even "authorities" tend to disagree or contradict. They all seem to agree now, though, that it's preferable for patients to be on a cocktail of medications for what is going to be a chronic disease no matter how much or how little you treat it.

* In the early 2000's, the move to ban CFC's (the delivery method of asthmatic inhalers) led to the creation of "HPA approved" inhalers that a) cost up to 4x as much as the older inhalers, and b) were far less effective. The medical community argues that they clinically are shown to be just as effective, but fail to note that they largely tested on machines - not people having asthma attacks. Anyone who has ever had or witnessed an asthma attack knows that when having one, especially if you are only to be taking these inhalers in an "emergency" basis - you aren't able to take controlled deep breaths like a machine emulates, because if you could you wouldn't be taking the dang medication to begin with.

* The pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies tried very hard to get folks to switch, years before they actually became the only legal way to get the medication. Unfortunately, in those years, no one in the medical community or in the private sector was able to get a proper body to listen to the objections to the new delivery method, because this medication that you could squirt in your mouth and directly into your lungs was deemed too environmentally risky. There was no attempt to improve the delivery method either, because no one saw a reason to spend more money on it.

* Now, once they were totally out of prescription medication, they only remained in over the counter (Primatine Mist). Primatine Mist has always been an "evil" to the medical community (and was the topic of some media scares because some sister of some model died after using one once, and high school athletes would "huff" them, making them a media darling to hate), but mostly because it allowed someone with mild asthma to have an inhaler and not spend thousands of dollars a year on doctors offices and tests and more medication.

So when the bill was introduced to allow them to be excepted from the regulation, it was too late because the larger pharmaceutical companies had already switched over, and were now seeing record profits in both the newly formulated inhalers and all the other medications that patients now require because of how ineffective the current inhalers are. They were cheap, effective, and prevented a lot of unnecessary medical care - so they were pretty much doomed as the enemy from the get go.

(...and, this just hurt on a larger level as well - I never used Primatine Mist regularly, but I tell you - it sure was nice to know it was there on the few occasions I needed it - when traveling, medications get lost/stolen, not every town has a 24 hour pharmacy even if you carry a written prescription etc. - it was a lifeline knowing that if worse came to worst, you wouldn't need to make a trip to the emergency room, you just had to find a 24 hour grocery store.)


So that's it...in a nutshell. No, no one was evil - but because of what happened, people are spending far more on medication, taking way more medication, and the day to day quality of life for the average asthmatic is lower than it once was just a few years ago (and not even thinking about what the long term effects of more adult steroid use on the body which we have no idea about).

The statistics on Asthma deaths is usually several years out of date, and difficult to interpret (because there usually are other factors) but I'm willing to bet that in the next few years for the first time we are going to see an increase in asthmatic deaths vs. the trend for the past 30 years. In any case, unfortunately they don't really measure the "quality of life" stuff - how many folks don't go for that walk anymore, or who have curbed their activities because the only medications that worked for them or were accessible have been made illegal.
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Nicely explained. I understand your point exactly. The HFA thing is pretty stupid. It was at the time and it still is. However, I can say with a good deal of authority that the pharma companies aren't a big fan of HFA either. The profit and effectiveness of regular old generic albuterol as a rescue med is pretty much unmatched by HFA (it's fairly horrible for managing asthma in moderate to severe cases). One wrinkle in the whole thing that is overlooked in the whole "pharma looking for a buck" angle, most pharma companies own their own generic companies.
 
OSUgirl77

OSUgirl77

Well-Known Member
WDW1974 said:
THIS is what the Disney Parks Blog released on Shanghai, FYI: (no pics of Bob or Tom, because Disney wasn't allowed to do so ... no video of Bob or Tom, because Disney wasn't allowed to ... copy that wasn't simply read by Disney Legal before Bland Thomas Smith put his name on it, but using the language of the CCP in it ... ''our leaders'')

http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/bl...d-storybook-castle-at-shanghai-disney-resort/
Click to expand...
I'm kinda shocked they left the comment asking for a photo of Iger to prove he was there...
 

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