Dennis Kneale: CNBC's Jerk of the Day 6/30/09

The "jerk" in today's Jerk of the Day is for Dennis Kneale's knee-jerk reaction to an FDA advisory panel's recommendation to lower the maximum daily dosage of acetaminophin, the active ingredient in Tylenol, Vicadin, Percocett and a number of other medications. According to the panel, acetaminophen causes more liver damage than any other drug with as many as 20,000 accidental overdoses each year and as many as 100-200 deaths. Kneale couldn't pass up the chance to take a couple swipes at the Obama administration though:
This is an activist Obama FDA vowing that they’re going to take the lead in making the American public healthier. The side effect from too much use of Tylenol on the liver has been known for what, five or ten years? Only now it’s a new administration with a new policy and they’re going to crack down. I just think a simple warning “Hey, don’t take it so much” ought to be enough here. (Responding to the number of people who die each year) Out of how many millions who take it every year? It’s such a small number. Now you are going to have people who aren’t taking it enough and they will be in pain as a result of this decision. I just say its way interventionist and it’s an FDA commissioner who is crusading rather than regulating. And we’re going to change the rules for all of them because a hundred or two hundred die. I love the Obama era, they’re just protecting us from ourselves again and again.

That’s right! This moron actually suggested that the FDA should put a warning on a package that says “Hey, don’t take it so much” rather than recommending a specific maximum dosage.

Of all the jerks on CNBC, I least understand how Dennis Kneale still has a job. While Kudlow, Santelli and Cabruso-Cabrera are every bit as ideological, they usually have enough sense to stick to vague free market shibboleths rather than offering specific proposals that would expose their vacuity. Kneale just blurts out anything that comes into his head even if means scoffing at people dying.

It is hard for me to believe that anyone is going to see this as FDA overreaching. It’s not like changing the recommended dosage will prevent anyone from gobbling down as much Tylenol he wants. Maybe Kneale is worried that he won’t be able to get his doctor to prescribe enough Vicadin or Percocet to keep his capacity for rational thought disabled. If this qualifies as “crusading” from the Obama administration, I think we are in deep trouble.

I’m also rather puzzled that Kneale would want to make a point of the fact that the FDA did nothing about this side effect during the Bush administration. On the other hand, I suppose that Kneale figures that eight deaths from samonella is nothing compared to all the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that get eaten.

My friend TGirsch has encouraged me to do more posts on the daily inanities on CNBC. I hope he appreciates that just the thought of how much Tylenol I am going to need to get rid of the pain in my skull that comes from listening to this jackass is causing my liver to fail.




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Dennis Kneale: CNBC's Jackass of the Day 3/9/09

The biggest jackass on CNBC today was Media and Technology Editor Dennis Kneale who posed the following question to Vice-President Joe Biden's chief economic advisor, Jared Bernstein (at the 2:10 mark of the video): "Warren Buffett had kind of a tacit little warning for Obama, the president that he supports and he gave advice to during the campaign He said first of all, the economy is priority one, two, and three, that’s the major thing that he should be focusing on. The economy is tha major thing that he should be focusing on. And yet Obama has launched this major health care reform. He’s going after alterative energy even though we’ve been subsidizing solar for thirty or forty years. It sounds like Buffett is almost trying to get a new message out there to Obama saying slow down 'Slow down and get back to the economy and the banking system.' What do you think?"



What I think is that Kneale is a liar.

In fact, Buffett expressed unswerving support for Obama saying that he was "very very smart" and that he was "the right President" for "the right country" and that he had "exactly the right goals." Buffet did say that he didn't think that Obama should try to get everything right away, but declined to identify any programs that should be deferred. It was Kneale who was criticizing health care reform and alternative energy, not Buffett. Rather than trying to send Obama a "new message," Buffett said "I don’t think it’s a good idea to use CNBC to talk to the President."



Kneale's take on Buffett was echoed by the rest of CNBC's hacks all day long. No one seemed to hear any of the positive things that he had to say about Obama. The only heard him say that the economy had to take precedence.