Category: Rants

If you visit this site regularly, you know that I try to keep you up to date on the latest in pant-shitting.
online pharmacy xenical best drugstore for you

And sweet Jesus, are we going to see some pant-shitting if Congress goes ahead with its current plan to mandate the purchase of health insurance – although said plan has been changing by the minute for weeks, dependent entirely on barometric pressure, the alignment of the Galilean moons, and what Harry Reid, Max Baucus, and Olympia Snowe have for lunch. My sensitive instruments may be destroyed while attempting to capture the deafening, simultaneous, and nationwide pant-shitting that will ensue. All responsible people should be stocking up on underwear to weather the coming shortages safely.

Admitting my amateur status as a game theoretician, there are three basic problems with insurance. First, people are always looking for ways to shirk. They want a best-of-all-worlds scenario in which they don't pay for it until they need it, and then they want to pay in and reap the benefits once they get sick or injured. Of course this defeats the entire purpose of insurance – paying x every month to eliminate the risk of having to pay 500x if something terrible happens. If legislation mandates that affordable coverage must be made available regardless of preexisting conditions, what stops an individual from gaming the system like this? So that's one argument for mandatory coverage.

Second, insurance is only affordable because it pools risk. If a few thousand people pay x every month, only a few hundred will incur medical expenses equal to or greater than x during that time, and only a few dozen (if that) will incur really outrageous medical expenses. Why do the healthy people pay in, then?
buy flexeril online cpff.ca/wp-content/languages/new/canadaa/flexeril.html no prescription

Well, nobody knows when they'll be hit by a drunk driver or wake up with a cancerous growth on their stomach. So they pay some reasonable amount x because they are risk averse. But let's say all of the healthy people say "Eh, screw this. I'm just paying for hypochondriacs and old people" and opt out. Purging the lowest-risk individuals – "creaming" the population – means that only people with medium or larger medical expenses are left. Therefore the price quickly escalates from the somewhat reasonable x to a much more onerous figure. The price of insurance, in short, is very sensitive to sampling. If a truly random mix of healthy and sick people is taken, the costs can be bearable. If the sample is biased toward people who run up huge medical bills, it becomes unaffordable for everyone.

Third – and this is the part that will baffle the mouthbreathers – it is both justifiable and "fair" to force people to buy insurance because if they don't, the rest of us have to pay their tab anyway. FJM victim Terry Jeffery tries to be cute in this piece on Intellectual Chernobyl entitled "Can Obama and Congress Order You to Buy Broccoli?" It is the typical slippery slope combined with retarded that we have come to expect from the right. Here's the difference. If you don't buy broccoli, nobody cares.
buy grifulvin online cpff.ca/wp-content/languages/new/canadaa/grifulvin.html no prescription

If you don't buy health insurance and get into a car accident, you run up a $300,000 ER tab that the hospital has to write off – i.e., they pass it on to the people who do pay.
online pharmacy finasteride best drugstore for you

Oddly enough the "personal responsibility" and "freedom of choice" crowd ends up in the same ER as the rest of us when some major crisis befalls them. And lo and behold their hoards of Ron Paul silver dollars and night shift at the screen door factory aren't quite enough to cover the costs. If the hospital attempted to collect it would be a heartless evil corporation – or Jews, blaming things on Jews is still popular – trying to trample on the rights of freedom-loving individuals. But who are we kidding, they have no assets worth pursuing anyway. Personal responsibility ends when their ability to pay does.

Do I think there are constitutional questions about Congress's ability to mandate the purchase of health insurance? Yes, although the state-level precedent of mandatory auto insurance offers at least some precedent. Legal questions aside, though, from a rational perspective mandatory coverage is the only logical choice. If people are allowed to shirk, they will shirk. Many of us don't have much money to work with and many of us who do are cheap sons of bitches. Mandating one half of the equation – that coverage be made available to anyone regardless of preexisting conditions – without also mandating coverage is setting the system up for a disaster so obviously inevitable that we'd literally be better off with no reform at all.

I've given the Obama administration's no-appearing-on-Fox-News policy a lot of thought, which is the amount that I believe it deserves. Rather than go with the knee jerk reaction – "Yeah, fuck 'em!" – I think there are some legitimate questions about any political figure declaring what is and is not news. Fortunately the facts are on the President's side in this case.

WK Wolfrum has a good write up of what is a quintessential Fox story (albeit one from the utterly viewerless Fox Business Network rather than Fox News). The FBN Happy Hour decides to have a chat about the SEC and rather than interviewing someone from, oh, I don't know, the SEC, they interview Overstock.com CEO Pat Byrne. That is enough of a WTF on its own. But the entire segment – Byrne predictably trashing the SEC and throwing around baseless accusations of bribery and hearsay from "a friend" – passes without noting the fact that, you know, Byrne and Overstock.com have just been subpoenaed as part of an SEC investigation into the company's continued "restatement" of its past numbers. Could anything be a better snapshot of the kind of production and journalistic "ethics" behind Murdoch's empire? The most logical person to invite on the air to talk about the SEC is a guy who is on the verge of having the SEC break it off in his ass. And why bother mentioning that Byrne just might not be an objective, disinterested observer?

Never mind the hundreds of examples of complete abandonment of anything resembling standard journalistic practices at Fox over the years. Remember when they underwrote, endorsed, and provided dozens of hours of free advertising to the "movement" they were supposed to be covering?

Yeah, see, here's the thing. Journalists cover protests. They don't hop on the bandwagon and relentlessly promote them as their own network-sponsored events starring your favorite on-air personalities. And how many segments over the years have been word-for-word recitations of lobbyist talking points helpfully provided to the network daily by the RNC and its ideological fellow travelers? Too many to count, although this example of Steve Douchebag Doocy reciting a Heritage Foundation press release literally word-for-word is priceless.

Look, Fox is what it is. It's a business and Rupert Murdoch has a right to try to make a profit. He airs whatever programming he thinks people want to see. On the mainstream Fox network, that means NFL football, raunchy cartoons, idiotic reality shows, and generally the lowest-browed, most juvenile, and crassest programming around. On Fox News and FBN it means far right wing propaganda that tells a substantial portion of America what it wants to hear. It is "news" only for people uninterested in facts and having their preconceived notions about reality challenged. They have largely turned the network over to the talking heads – BillO, Beck, Hannity, etc. – and those individuals explicitly admit that they are not hosting "news" shows. They are paid to provide commentary and they deliver. That armies of mouthbreathers treat Beck as a source of serious news is only partially his fault.

Fox Network, Fox News Channel, and Fox Business Network are identical. They provide a single product: entertainment. If some of that comes in the guise of "news" or "reporting," that doesn't obligate the rest of the world to play along with their farce. The White House should provide Fox News all of the press privileges entitled to an organization of its size and viewership. But why should the President or anyone around him feel obligated to participate directly, above and beyond giving Fox access equivalent to what it gives other networks, in programming that amounts to little more than entertainment. Fox is entitled to air whatever kind of programming they choose, but calling it "news" is not all that is required to make it news.

Every day the President, like all presidents, makes decisions about access that benefit some media outlets and hurt others. He does exclusive interviews with the Washington Post but not the Akron Beacon-Journal. That he chooses not to act out the role of the guy suspended over the dunk tank at the carnival while Fox's entertainers take shot after shot at him to the great delight of a fanatically hostile viewership utterly uninterested in anything he has to say is unsurprising. The President of the United States is under no obligation to be to Fox News what the deadbeat babydaddys are to Maury Povich and Jerry Springer – the reliable ratings booster dragged on stage periodically to be humiliated, booed, and lectured at great length by people of dubious intelligence.

So everyone has the co-worker or family member who constantly spouts right wing propaganda, believes anything Glenn Beck tells them, and incessantly clutters your inbox with ridiculous, poorly written emails about the legitimacy of the current President's birth. The next time you are cornered at the water cooler with this person and they happen to be ranting about socialized healthcare, please ask them a simple question: If you got fired tomorrow or if the boss decided to stop providing insurance benefits, what would you do?

I'd be willing to bet Uncle Larry and the woman in the next cubicle who thinks the Earth is 6,000 years old have never thought of this.

You are likely to get one of three responses.

The first possibility is stunned silence, the kind that might be expected of people who stumble through life blithely assuming that they are immune to the disasters that befall others. Second, you will get some ridiculous talking points about personal responsibility – "I'd find another job with benefits" or "I'd buy my own." These statements won't just make Horatio Alger pitch a tent from beyond the grave. They will also reveal how little your acquaintance knows about what insurance costs and how plentiful good jobs are.

buy cymbalta online buy cymbalta no prescription

Third, he or she will insist that they are too smart to allow this to happen to them; having been Smart and Talented Enough to get a job with excellent security and benefits, they confidently believe that outsourcing or no-benefit jobs apply only to the economic opportunities of lesser people.

In short, the answer is likely to be extremely unsatisfying. But at the very least forcing them to think is likely to induce them to bring the conversation to a rapid conclusion before they scurry off to listen to Hannity's America. Isn't that the most important goal here?
buy dapoxetine online buy dapoxetine no prescription

(note: I got this idea from another site, but I'll be damned if I can remember which one. Sorry to whomever I am short-changing)

It sure would be nice to be Megan McArdle, wouldn't it? What could beat having Dad's money buy you an MBA from the University of Chicago and then, unable to land a real job, securing a gig as some sort of expert on economics, business, and finance for a major publication! And once you wrap up this high paying, high visibility position in which important people will treat you like an authority, here's the best part: you don't have to do any research! You're so brilliant that you can just write whatever flies off the top of your head – or better yet, just repeat what lobbyists or other bobbleheads say!

If you're thinking "That sounds like a great deal, where do I sign?

" the answer is right the fuck here. I don't know if you know this about us Polacks, but we are codebreakers. We broke Enigma before the British took credit for it. And now after millions of man-hours of labor I have cracked the McArdle code. It's a formula. And once you master it, you too will be a Famous Very Serious Libertarian Expert!! Ready your note-taking pens and thank me later. A McColumn is broken into three simple parts – an introduction, the presentation of "facts," and the moral of the story.

Since you are a beginner I will start you out with plenty of examples to choose from in the McColumn Template.

THE INTRO: "The other day I was talking with (one of my friends / a cabdriver / a stranger at the airport / the Yeti) about (insert current event or issue – just use whatever all the other columnists are talking about!) and I'm (confused / angry) by the reaction from (the liberal media / other people who aren't as smart as me). Since when did (insert Straw Man unrelated to the chosen issue – something like "Our 1st Amendment rights" – or an finance topic you don't fully understand but is in bold on the Cato Institute website) become such a radical idea?"

THE FACTS: "(insert economic concept here) is (insert incorrect definition). For example, (insert hypothetical like 'Suppose X makes $Y and is taxed at a 10% rate' rather than looking up the actual facts and figures relevant to the subject). If we (insert hated liberal proposal here), then (insert outcome that in no way is a logical or necessary consequent of said proposal). What sense does that make? Why not (Cato talking point) instead? According to (insert for-profit "think tank" / industry trade association / lobbyist group / Glenn Reynolds), if we (what our corporate betters want us to do) instead then (the entire economy will be fixed overnight / the world will be a better place / the skies will rain gold doubloons / your farts will smell like warm vanilla potpourri). (Insert incorrectly cited, erroneous, fabricated, misinterpreted, or misleading statistics and half-truths). So (innocently ask why we as a nation – nay, as a species – cannot pursue this clearly superior course of action)?"

THE MORAL: "(Expression of frustration that people just. don't. get it.). I mean, (recognition of the reader's skepticism of industry-supplied talking points as economic wisdom – you know, show your target demographic that you're hip, young, and jaded too!). I get that, but (recognition that the reader has been brainwashed to believe that conservative – er, "libertarian" – solutions are uncool). Nothing could be further from the truth! Of course, it will never happen because (Obama is a socialist dictator / more liberal brainwashing / repeat talking points one last time for the fanboys with minimal reading comprehension skills).
buy black cialis generic yourcialisrx.com over the counter

(Pithy, sarcastic, high school newspaper editorial-caliber "closer" to remind readers one final time that you're way different than the rest of the financial talking heads out there. Different, and therefore more trustworthy, because you're a jaded skeptic too!)."

It's just that simple! Keep in mind that the point is to regurgitate the talking points in a package that Hip Young Folks will find appealing. Readers are used to seeing "suits" and stodgy old corporate types shilling this kind of message. But when they hear them from a totally Independent, non-partisan Expert and Journalist it will have a lot more credibility. And that's what this is all about: credibility. You're selling credibility. If you think it's impossible to shill and be credible at the same time, maybe this line of work isn't for you.

POST SCRIPT: Per one of my astute commenters, a Real McColumn must also include the author following up in the comment section when readers start pointing out your butchery or total disregard of the facts. Keep it simple here! You don't want to start taxing those neurons trying to "support your argument" with "facts." Remember, credibility is all about how pretty you look, how confident you sound, and how many big words you use! So choose one of the following: "You're misunderstanding my argument / Read (insert link to lobbyist press release or CBO report that you badly distorted) / Just because I got the facts wrong doesn't mean I'm not right / You're banned."

The internet is a weird place, with the constant taking and publishing of photos of oneself fueling our society's love of exhibitionism, narcissism, and voyeurism. There is no personal space anymore and some people seem very happy about that. Take Twitter, for instance. Does anyone really need to hear what I think every minute of the day? Of course not. But the utter lack of anything interesting to say hasn't stopped millions of people from hopping on the bandwagon. Twitter and Facebook simultaneously service our need to feel important / interesting and the voyeuristic tendencies of what is fast becoming a nation of creepy, asocial shut-ins.

Meghan McCain created a controversy by posting a revealing photo of herself on her Twitter account. I could care less what she chooses to do, but her effort to play it off as unintentional is pretty stupid. Could one share this picture with the world and say with a straight face, "Boobs? Why, I hardly noticed!"

Yeah, no. "Girl who takes a lot of pictures that 'accidentally' show massive amounts of boobage" is a stock character in everyone's online social circle at this point. Big deal. Great. Do what you want, Meghan. Wear what you want. Show what you want, or don't. People who complain should promptly be told to kiss your ass. But why pretend like this is anything other than what it is: one of 100 million Americans who get a cheap thrill out of exposing themselves (in this case quite literally) on the internet. McCain indulged her exhibitionist tendencies and her Twitter "followers" indulged the kind of creepy, lurking outside the window voyeurism that is Twitter's implicit raison d'être.

This guy, on the other hand, could keep an army of psychiatrists busy. (via S,N!)

Taking into account the cesspool of personality disorders and barely restrained sociopaths that is the internet, this guy is the most obvious candidate to become a serial rapist I have ever seen. To wit:

We control the way we portray ourselves in this bizarre medium; this is the photo he wants you to see. Someone said "Hey Ben, you look like a sexual predator who may also bomb a Federal courthouse someday" and his response was, "Yep, that's what I'm going for." As his screed makes it perfectly clear that he has never spoken to a woman without first giving his credit card number or being maced immediately afterward, his choice to embrace this makes sense. His ranting reveals his belief that Ms. McCain is more popular because she has big boobs, which is a natural compensatory response for a person who realizes that his own lack of talent and terrifying personality shortcomings are consigning him to a life of insignificance.

Is Ms. McCain, as Ben claims, an attention whore? Of course. Who broadcasts his or her life on the internet without being one? We write blogs or maintain Twitter accounts because we want people to pay attention to us. If taking pictures of one's chest, which just happens to look like one was struck in the upper back by a pair of large rockets, furthers the efforts to get more people to pay attention, great. If it attracts a bunch of faux-puritans seething with fake righteous indignation at her "sluttiness," that's the downside. Both outcomes are possible in this bizarre world we've created, one in which we invite possibly deranged strangers to peer into our lives and in which we compete with one another for the bragging rights concomitant with attracting the greater number of voyeurs followers.

I know better than to think highly of the intellectual prowess of the Average American, but I simply cannot wrap my head around the widespread skepticism and occasional outbursts against vaccination. To hear people, even some who appear to have a mediocre or better grip on reality, parrot the arguments of Truman-era water fluoridation conspiracy theorists is legitimately disturbing. If only America's unvaccinated mouthbreathers were smart enough to realize that as they walk around slobbering H1N1 in public places they are creating demand for vaccines in exactly the people we don't want to get them.

We expect Glenn Beck to be characteristically Glenn Beck-like (which is to say picking-corn-out-of-shit insane) when gravely warning his viewers that getting a flu shot is dependent upon "how much you trust your government." But Bill Maher is sharing similar nuggets of wisdom with his entirely different audience:

Gee Bill, people who write "u" and "ur" are in a marginal position to comment on the intelligence of others. Ignoring his efforts to cornhole the English language we see a viewpoint that is legitimately moronic but so common that it no longer merits raised eyebrows.
buy prednisone online www.mobleymd.com/wp-content/languages/new/prednisone.html no prescription

Whether barely sentient celebrities are on daytime TV rallying barely sentient housewives against autism-causing vaccines or late night hosts are dishing out Common Sense Wisdom about how vaccines are a government plot to poison you, this hysteria is perilously close to becoming mainstream.

I will not get a flu shot because ideally I shouldn't get a flu shot. I am a healthy 30 year old. Vaccines against epidemics like the flu should go to high risk populations (healthcare workers, kids, and the elderly).
https://www.health-advantage.net/wp-content/themes/mts_schema/lang/pot/singulair.html

But fewer people getting vaccinated means more people in the low risk population are being exposed to infected individuals. Thus more people who shouldn't necessarily be vaccinated seek it out.
buy amoxil online www.mobleymd.com/wp-content/languages/new/amoxil.html no prescription

Thus we increase the probability of seeing newer, more dangerous viruses for which Glenn Beck's viewers won't get vaccinated.

More likely, however, unvaccinated people won’t get sick because so many of their coworkers and neighbors will get vaccinated – i.e., a classic example of Free Riding. They consume more than their fair share of a good (health) without contributing anything to its production. When Mary J. Moron starts boasting about how she didn't get the poison vaccine for her kids and they didn't get sick, gently remind her that you assumed whatever risk and costs exist so that your kids wouldn't be exposing hers to the virus. When she responds with a pastiche of cherry picked and probably made up "facts" about the monstrous Communist plot to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, remember that she will outbreed you. Weep for the future of the planet.
https://www.health-advantage.net/wp-content/themes/mts_schema/lang/pot/elavil.html

Sure, vaccines carry risk. You know what else is risky? Not getting vaccinated. Americans aren't real good at thinkin' or math but it amazes me that they can't figure out which is riskier: taking a flu vaccine and accepting the 1% odds of getting sick or taking one's chances standing in line at the Post Office in front of a tubercular hillbilly hacking the contents of his esophagus in your general direction.

Calvin Trillin, the NYT's last living link to the martinis-and-parties-at-Capote's-place days, has an outstanding piece on the correlation between intelligence and the financial crisis. It's a good point and admittedly one that I hadn't thought of previously: Wall Street was a "better" place – or at least had much less potential to do damage to the society in which it operates – when working there was a place for people who weren't smart enough to get into law, business, or the hard sciences. It was the collection point for, as Trillin puts it, the ex-jocks who slept in the back of his college classes. The students in the front rows paid attention and ended up in (comparatively) low paying work in academia or the public sector. The guys in back just wanted a relatively predictable way to make some money, "enough to buy a sailboat."

When Wall Street operated with that mindset – "We make an assload of money, let's make sure we don't screw up the gravy train" – its ability to fail spectacularly and take the country down with it was limited. They've only really screwed up when they tried getting clever. Take 1929 for example. It took an "innovator" to realize that people could speculate on stocks with borrowed money and no risk, or that banks could loan money with stock as collateral. In the modern context, it took some whiz kids and math geniuses to come up with Credit Default Swaps or complicated derivatives. If only Wall Street as a whole were a little dumber, this might have been avoided.

What changed? In my mind there are two major culprits. First, Reaganite society in the 1980s put the fast-talking, high-living Wall Street Guy on a pedestal. Boy, what a glamorous job, the kind of thing that a real man's man would be doing. Second, there's a lot of plain old greed. At some point Wall Street collectively determined that in the absence of effective oversight or regulation (Thanks, Ronnie!) they could make truly comical sums of money by indulging in substantially more risky behavior. The mindset shifted from "We make a lot of money, don't screw it up" to "Why make ten million when you could make eleventy billion?"

Ideally we want people on Wall Street to be like pharmacists: smart enough to do the job properly but not smart enough to start tinkering. We don't want the guy filling our prescriptions to 'innovate' or hire some Russian physicists who couldn't get tenure to craft complex mathematical models and determine how we could replace our single pill with an amalgam of 75 different pills with horrible side effects. The standard leg-humping free market mantra of the past few decades has sainted creativity and innovation, two things that people with specialized skills (math wizards, for instance) enable. But in this area have either of those qualities served us well as a society? What did all that mathematical creativity produce? It made some people who were rich obscenely rich. It (ultimately) made some people who were rich poor. For the rest of us it has made it impossible to find a decent job. It has destroyed entire industries. It has bankrupted the public sector to an extent unimaginable twenty years ago. If only they hadn't been so clever we might have avoided this; if only they were a bit smarter they might be able to provide us with a solution.

(Sections of this are cross-posted from two Instaputz posts)

I am currently fascinated by Megan McArdle. She may in fact be the one perfect specimen of Everything Wrong with America – moreso than Easy Mac, Bridezillas, and the enduring popularity of zombie movies combined. As a certain blogger who shall remain nameless pointed out, her entire shtick is based on the premise that she is holds an elite MBA (from University of Chicago) and is thus a weighty voice in debates on all things financial.
https://primeraeyecare.com/wp-content/themes/consultstreet/inc/customizer/custom/synthroid.html

Yet she has never worked in the industry (or worked at all for that matter), bases none of her arguments on facts and half of them on anecdotes ("When I was unemployed, I felt like…"), and routinely gets undergrad-level shit about economics wrong.
https://primeraeyecare.com/wp-content/themes/consultstreet/inc/customizer/custom/levaquin.html

she uses the terms balance sheet and income statement interchangeably. She doesn't seem to understand when it is appropriate to use a mean versus a median or vice-versa. Her arguments – or "arguments" – are transparent regurgitations of talking points from lobbyists, right wing think tanks, and other equally ignorant bloggers. She is, in summary, a total idiot who for some reason has been given a prominent place in our public discourse.

That reason, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that doughy libertarian shut-ins and ex-fratboy mortgage brokers think she is fuckable.
buy cymbalta online pavg.net/wp-content/languages/new/where/cymbalta.html no prescription

Earlier this week she brought the retarded to an extent which could only be described as retarded in this piece about "Why Medicare Costs are Growing Faster than other Healthcare."

One of the commenters offered a retort that I've seen in a bunch of places: "Of course Medicare is growing faster! It cares for a sicker population!
buy grifulvin online pavg.net/wp-content/languages/new/where/grifulvin.html no prescription

"

It's a common intuition, but it's wrong. Consider a simple model of a population with two groups: young and old. Assume that the old consume five times as much of an undifferentiated good, healthcare, as the young do, and that each unit costs $2,000. So the oung cost us $2,000 apiece per year, and the old cost us $10K. Now assume that the cost of healthcare in each group grows at 10% a year. At the end of five years, each young person will cost us $3,221 and each old person will cost us $16,105 – or exactly five times as much as a young person.

First of all, Megan reminds us yet again that there's no good reason to look up facts when you can just make up a hypothetical. Eight seconds of Google research would have shown that her entire premise is made of stupid and wrong.

Second, the CBO report on which she bases her entire argument that Medicare/Medicaid are growing faster than private insurance explicitly says that it shouldn't be used to say Medicare/Medicaid are growing faster then private insurance. Megan, you so bad! The sign says "No Loitering" but you loiter anyway!

Third, look at the math she feels compelled to show us. "Assume" that the old consume five times as much healthcare as the young. If each grows by 10%, after five years the old will consume five times as much healthcare as the young. Watch Megan's neurons fire wildly in an effort to understand multiplication. In other news, if Megan is twice as stupid as Jonah Goldberg and they each double their stupid over the next year, Megan will be twice as stupid as Jonah Goldberg.

Fourth, way to pull a McArdle^tm by throwing in a $5 phrase like "an undifferentiated good" in an effort to sound smart and cover up the fact that she hasn't the slightest idea what in holy hell she's talking about.

Fifth, stay tuned for the Oscar-baiting biopic of Megan McArdle starring Tara Reid as a dull young girl who overcomes her childhood addiction to eating Elmer's glue and her own shit to become a Real Financial Journalist.

In conclusion, if we assume that the elderly use far more healthcare than the young and that their use increases at a faster rate, we can clearly see that the elderly use far more healthcare than the young and that their use increases at a faster rate.

But wait. There's more. Check the comments. Here is a free tip for aspiring bloggers: when the first ten comments on your post are pointing out basic factual errors you've made or statistics you've twisted to suit your fancy, keep up the good work. You're doing great. She responds to criticism with a particular CBO report she used to justify her argument that Medicare/Medicaid make costs increase faster than private insurance. Quote from page 16 of said report, after an explanation of the data and methodology:

Consequently, the differences in excess cost growth between Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care spending should not be interpreted as meaning that Medicare or Medicaid is less able to control spending than private insurers.

But it's much more convincing if you ignore that part and cherry pick something that supports your recycled faux-libertarian bullshit talking points argument. Great work, Megan. Keep responding to your commenters with the indescribably feeble "You're misunderstanding my argument" rather that coming to grips with the fact that you are playing in a league that won't tolerate your shit. Being a right wing pundit may not entail a lot of fact checking, but putting yourself out there as a Very Serious Econ Person without being able to differentiate your ass and a hole in the ground…well, it doesn't work quite as well. The legions of sycophants enjoyed by Beck and Malkin are replaced in McArdle's case by dozens of people pointing out how stupid she is.

When a person or group of people puts extensive effort into trying to correct your behavior for the better, nothing rattles you quite like seeing them give up and walk away in a cloud of anger, defeat, and disgust.
online pharmacy albuterol best drugstore for you

Imagine visiting the old family doctor and after years of hearing "Stop eating so much red meat," "Stop smoking," and "Get more exercise" you brace for more of the same. Instead she walks into the examination room, looks at you with weary resignation, and announces, "Fuck it.
buy zoloft online www.epsa-online.org/wp-content/languages/new/prescription/zoloft.html no prescription

Go to Hardee's. Smoke unfiltered tar. I don't give a shit anymore." That would be shocking because the doctor is supposed to be the person who gives you the right advice even though you clearly intend to ignore it. This is why teachers and professors listlessly remind every class not to wait until the evening before the due date to start their papers even though we are fully aware that everyone will. We do it because if you're going to engage in harmful behavior we want, at the very least, to instill awareness of the fact that it is harmful.

With that, my befuddlement at the decision of the American Academy of Family Physicians to enter into an endorsement deal – ahem, 'corporate partnership' – with Coca-Cola. Aside from being a landmark in the history of surrendering one's dignity for cash and making a public show of sucking Satan's wang as enthusiastically and noisily as possible, this represents an exceptionally troubling abrogation of professional responsibility by the Academy. They proudly announce that they eagerly await:

working with The Coca-Cola Company, and other companies in the future, on the development of educational materials to teach consumers how to make the right choices and incorporate the products they love into a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.

Translation: we give up. You're going to drink Coke anyway so we're lowering the bar and simply hoping that you'll cut back to 96 ounces per day.

Coke is bad for you. Soda is bad for you. It's a 200-calorie can of corn syrup and chemicals. Diet soda lacks the calories but doubles down on the unnatural chemical additives. And doctors have an absolute – not relative – obligation to tell you to avoid it. If you're not going to follow that advice anyway, and I certainly understand that few people do, why get worked up about it? Well, I'm glad you asked. Several reasons.

First, the conflict of interest involved in taking Coke's money is embarrassing. The company's view of health and nutrition is comically self-serving and diametrically opposed to what we know about the obesity epidemic, especially among children.
online pharmacy temovate best drugstore for you

Doctors know, as the linked article points out, that morbidly obese children are often taking in 1000 to 2000 calories per day just in soft drinks. Yet Coke CEO / Satan's Fluffer Muhtar Kent summarizes the company's Pollyanna Theory of American Obesity in a WSJ editorial: Coke doesn't make people fat. Eating too much of everything that isn't Coke coupled with insufficient exercise makes people fat. Of course. Is the AAFP going to endorse this position?

Second, how is Coke's money going to affect the research the group claims will be funded? Are they going to start falsifying data to make it look like drinking liquid sugar is OK or are they going to piss off their new corporate partner? How much BS will they shovel in creating an explanation for how Coke is "part of a healthy diet"? I envision an updated version of those old commercials which claimed that Lucky Charms were part of a healthy breakfast as long as you ate an orange, a bunch of grapes, two slices of dry whole grain toast, and a scrambled egg with it.

Third, no good can come of watering down the message from "Eliminate this from your diet" to "OK, we give up.
buy vibramycin online www.epsa-online.org/wp-content/languages/new/prescription/vibramycin.html no prescription

Just try to take it easy" combined with some fallacious theory about "making up for it" with more exercise. There is a meaningful difference between treating yourself to the occasional Coke while understanding that it's bad for you and convincing yourself that it isn't bad in moderation. And that is what Coke is trying to buy here – legitimacy for and dissemination of the idea that, gee, it's really not so bad.

Getting the blessing of medical professionals must be a dream come true for Coke, the kind of publicity that a company can't just buy. Wait. Actually it can be bought, and as usual the price was disturbingly low.

I have to admit that I really like the Norwegians' decision to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to the incumbent President. Not because he deserves it or did anything to earn it, as it is so premature and shoddily justified that it's almost embarrassing. Scratch that – it is embarrassing to see the kind of obsequiousness rained on George W. Bush by conservatives circa 2002 lavished upon Obama. Frankly I'm surprised he accepted it, as self-aware people are generally uncomfortable with being fawned over. But perhaps the committee and the President are in cahoots and share a twisted sense of humor, in which case this is merely a bar bet on a grand scale between two parties interested in seeing if they can make Glenn Beck's head explode.

The reaction has been predictably hyperbolic and easily matches in intensity the extent to which the prize is undeserved.

buy orlistat online www.bodybuildingestore.com/wp-content/languages/new/engl/orlistat.html no prescription

Call it Obama Derangement Syndrome or whatever you want. Going forward, this could be a component of an effective strategy for the White House.

In 2004 the Kerry campaign was (justifiably) criticized for chasing rabbits; that is, every day the Bush campaign threw out some nonsense to distract them, to knock them off of their message (whatever that was).
buy grifulvin online www.bodybuildingestore.com/wp-content/languages/new/engl/grifulvin.html no prescription

The Kerry people obliged, of course, dutifully running after every lark like the Bob Shrum-led idiots they were. Here's the thing. I just checked with some scientists at the University of the Obvious, and they noted with great certainty that Glenn Beck and his kind are all idiots too. So perhaps Bill Maher was onto something when he recommended in jest that the President repeal "don't ask, don't tell" to make Limbaugh freak out. We know these people lose whatever tenuous association with reality they have at the mention of words like "gay" or "feminism." So why not endlessly distract them from the administration's real agenda with a series of meaningless, non-binding resolutions? How hard is it to get Congress to declare something Harvey Milk Day or to rename an airport concourse after George Tiller?

These people can be played like a fiddle. No matter how furious "socialized medicine" and "negotiating with terrorists" make wingnuts, they just can't help themselves when it comes to the godless homos, abortion, bra-burning 1960s feminism, and so on. All of those issues are legitimate ones, of course, but they're not being dealt with directly right now and they make fantastic diversions. We can't help but notice how an Olympics and a symbolic award destroyed whatever capacity for logical thought exists on the right. What did Sun Tzu say about using every available weapon in war?