Chupacabra Report

I should expect that if I read George Will on any subject other than baseball he’s gonna get my goat. Hell, even baseball. He’d probably vote Bud Selig into the Hall of Fame, the biggest tool since Bowie Kuhn.

Today he devotes a column to calling John McCain a RINO. Fine George, I know that you folks call your club “the party of Lincoln,” even though your politics are closer to those of King George III.

Will criticizes McCain for attacking the pharmaceutical companies, (taking a stand to defend the wealthy and powerful, a “profile in toadyism”) saying that their profit margins are the reason that we no longer suffer the scourge of Polio.

Excuse me, the interns that write your column may be too young to know that Jonas Salk refused to patent his vaccine, preferring to see it quickly disseminated for the good of all mankind.

Can anyone imagine this happening today? Salk’s research would be owned by whatever multinational corporation sponsored his research, and their business model would turn it into a multi-billion dollar cash cow, which they would proceed to milk for the next twenty years, enriching top executives and preferred shareholders, who no doubt would spend some of this money lobbying for tax breaks and patent extensions.