Google apparently must not be working today. Either that, or Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher has yet to master this useful internet tool:

Hamsher, meanwhile, drew the ire of many progressives when she led a last-minute assault on the health care reform bill. In trashing the bill, she invoked the $80 billion PhRMA deal, with which she had no problem six months earlier, when she was still on board.

We objected to the PhRMA deal vociferously and strenuously from the moment the New York Times reported its existence on August 9, 2009:

August 9:  “In ten years, $30 billion a year would mean $300 billion in savings.   The deal cut by the White House is for $80 billion in savings.  So the pharmaceutical industry gets to keep $220 billion for the low low price of $150 million in August to pass health care reform so Rahm Emanual won’t be 13-1.”

August 10: Eshoo biogics amendment “was a big boon to PhRMA, and a serious blow to cost control efforts for phramaceutical drugs….The details of the deal between the White House and PhRMA have have not been released. As Robert Reich says, those responsible for the deal — including Max Baucus and the White House — need to be forthcoming about what it entails.”

August 13:  “Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post got his hands on a July 7 memo documenting the deal between PhRMA and the White House, which both are now denying but which was initially confirmed by Jim Messina, Deputy White House Chief of Staff to the New York Times….The White House needs to be open and transparent about the deals that they cut, who was involved in making them, and what the ultimate impact on a health care package might be.”

August 19:  “The White House never cared about getting Republican votes — it cared about keeping the Republicans from peeling off the dollars of stakeholders like PhRMA.  Giving in to “Republican” demands was cover for writing shitty things into the bill that would keep the stakeholders happy. ”

November 2:  “The pharmaceutical industry, which has donated over $712,000 to Rep. Eshoo, may be less than happy to learn that she is committed to eradicating evergreening language from her legislation. But as the young medical students who recently protested in front of her office told her staff, access to these lifesaving drugs for their patients is far more important than protecting pharmaceutical monopolies.”

December 10:  Harry Reid, Crook for PhRMA, Tries To Kill Drug Reimportation.

The pharmaceutical industry had 42 members of Congress insert the same language into the Congressional Record expressly to push back against our campaign against the PhRMA deal. That one was kind of hard to miss.

Dan Abrams is the publisher of Mediate.   Earlier this year, Mediaite along with Gawker and others promoted the National Enquirer story that Obama was having an affair.  Abrams indicated that a Drudge link made it newsworthy from a media perspective.

Sorry Mediaite, no link.  Not going to be baited into driving traffic to you and reward this kind of sensationalism.  You want traffic, do your own homework.  Anyone unwilling to do that is in no position to set themselves up as judge of anything.

Note: This post has been altered from its original form to indicate more accurately what happened with the National Enquirer story.