Actually

fuck it, let's do some catch-up shorters.

Private Sector Welfare:

I don't think poor children and the disabled should be left to depend on corporate largesse, I'm a fucking humanitarian.
But you could convince me to change my mind.

John Edwards Back in the Spotlight:

Dear angry, hateful conservatives who are my only remaining readers,

Have some red meat. John Edwards, like, totally negates Mark Stanford. And Ensign.

What Does It Mean To Have a Private Health Care System:

I don't think Matt understands what worries me about national health care

What Megan means when she invariably says a critic misunderstood her is that, sure, she was demonstrably wrong, but who the fuck cares? She's being paid to push an agenda, and what matters is if she echoes and maybe even creates a talking point or two. Reality is immaterial, perception is all that matters. Megan doesn't care what the truth is, she cares about being paid and convincing herself and others that her childish prejudices have meaning. Europe doesn't perform medical research, and Asia and Australia and all them other continents don't even have scientific labs, so if we try to make non scientist health industry executives accept smaller bonuses we'll never cure AIDS. Megan's arguments depend on this being true, so therefore it is true.

Surprising Findings:

Wow, vicious lies, scare tactics, and obstructing real debate works to prevent educating people. It's a good thing I agree with these lying, industry tool, bullies, otherwise I might have to get mad at them for being so uncivil.
Update: How dare the White House point out the people Peter's friends paid to have temper tantrums in public are making use of Nazi imagery?

The Grassroots are Green, and They Fold:

As a friend and fiancee of astroturfers it pisses me off no end to see actual grassroots organizations that depend on the citizenry they want to defend for money entering the health care battle. People are more likely to listen to pretty 20 year old coeds calmly explaining facts than angry, lonely elderly movement conservatives stroking out in town halls about someone trying to help them. PIRGs are actually successful in many of their endeavors, and despite my claiming to know all about them I don't understand that PIRG canvassers' pay doesn't come from George Soros but from commission. (I know this because I worked for NYPIRG for a summer.)
The whole thing just makes Megan so ANGRY, how dare young people work for their own benefit by going door to door trying to undo the damage of the lies told by people like Megan. Only corporate funded organizations that have employed or currently do employ people she knows personally should be allowed into this debate.

Is Pharma a Victim of Its Own Hype?:

Derek Lowe made me a beautiful lil straw baby that lets me call people who think the pharmaceutical industry has been corrupted by the profit motive spoiled babies who just wanna have everything now, now, now! Don't question where research dollars are going, or why R&D spending has gone down as profits, and spending on marketing, have skyrocketed. THAT'S THE ONLY WAY IT CAN BE DONE.

Has Megan ever actually addressed an opposing viewpoint with even the barest hint of intellectual honesty?

Health Care: A Lesson in Practical Philosophy:

John Holbo writes a long post asking me to clarify whether I'm against national health care as a matter of principle, or against national health care as a matter of pragmatics. To some extent, this is a meaningless question. Whatever practical objections I have must be judged on some principle. There's a fairly difficult philisophical question involved in whether we should permit a system that serves some current people badly in tangible ways, merely because it will probably save the lives of other unknown people in some unspecified way in the future.

No, she didn't link to it. He must have made a very good argument. She responds by making a ton of shit up and then saying, "see?" In fact, in Megan's completely fictional world health care reform advocates are risking the lives of countless millions by jeopardizing the bonuses of health industry executives, so we're the true monsters, and she is NOT putting her own personal profit and desire to believe incredibly naive, stupid, demonstrably empirically wrong shit ahead of the well being of millions of Americans. And that has no role to play in why she needs addictive drugs to sleep.

Is What's Good for Pharma Good for America?:

Last week, I expended a lot of words trying to explain my objection to the centrally administered universal health care system that he, and most liberals, would like to see us evolve towards. In particular I was responding to Matt Steinglass, one of my favorite liberal bloggers.

Those are the opening lines to this post. Megan was an English major, and has the word editor in her job title. And later, this;

I am interest in what is good for society.

And I am Jack's sense that Fight Club was actually a shitty movie for yuppies and repressed homosexuals.
And there's this;

I am not under the delusion that those are necessarily the same thing. "What's good for General Motors is good for America" was a Great Society slogan, not a libertarian, or even a conservative one. Right now, pharmaceutical companies spend a great deal of effort on innovation because they have to in order to survive. But if survival means ditching the R&D labs and churning out low-cost copies of things they've already invented, then I'm pretty sure that's what they'll do. To paraphrase Adam Smith, it is not to the benevolence of pharma that I look, but to its self interest. In the current system, that self interest means inventing new drugs.

I think it was Susan who pointed out even Megan's historical claim is utterly wrong here, but what the fucking fuck? How does she write this shit? I've been on this beat about two years and I'm still awestruck by her ability to completely ignore every aspect of reality. She literally has no idea what she's talking about, even most pharma lobbyists will pretend to acknowledge flaws in the current system and point to empty faux reforms for excuses. Megan just pretends fire is wet, and pats herself on the back for saying so.

Food For Thought:

Herbert Stein's What I Think is one of my favorite books on economics. It's so . . . humble. Stein, who was head of the CEA under Nixon, doesn't pretend to have all the answers. Regarding many of the most contentious issues of the day, he basically says, "It probably doesn't matter all that much." To others, "Why are you so sure you're right?" Words to live by, left or right.

In other words, Megan thinks she's humble, and that her efforts to lie and distract from reality's well known liberal bias are, like, Socratic and shit. But remember, she knows she's right, it's other people who need to question themselves, like those losers who were against Bush and the Iraq War and deregulating the financial industries and....

Ok, break time for me. More catch-up shorters to come whenever they do.