Keith Olbermann Declares War on Nursing Homes
My eyes started to glaze over after the first two and a half hours of Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on health care last night. The last thing I remember hearing was, “When you think of getting $237,000 in campaign contributions from nursing homes, Senator Baucus, do you ever think about whether they subtract that amount of money evenly from all the patients suffering and dying in the lousy ones or just a few of the lousy ones?” I’m not entirely sure what that means, but apparently this generation’s Edward R. Murrow is finally letting those nursing home bastards have it. Give ‘em hell, Keith!
In the event that your plans to gargle razor blades today got canceled, here’s the video:
After accusing every corporation in America of being complicit in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911 and portraying the health care industry as an oppressive grindhouse straight out of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Olbermann used the rest of his airborne spittle to announce a shocking development: many Republicans and Democrats who oppose Obama’s health care plan have received campaign contributions from the health care industry. Some of the really crooked ones even accepted donations from nursing homes.
This is the new hot-off-the-fax-machine Democrat talking point on ObamaCare. After Rep. Paul Ryan had the bad manners to point out on MSNBC that Congress’ health care plan wasn’t public but a list of private providers that contracted with the government and the American people had the temerity to send poll numbers on the public option into a nosedive, Democrats lost their two best arguments. Their latest tack is that everyone in the United States of America who is even mildly tepid about ObamaCare is a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield.
As Olbermann noted, this includes the entire Republican party, every Blue Dog Democrat, and 65 percent of the American people who either oppose or are undecided on the public option. How deep the financial tendrils of the health care industry run! Liberals complain about the nutty theories of the Birthers, but actually believe in a conspiracy where health insurance corporations have bribed 195 million people into opposing what’s in their best interests.
This talking point has been repeated ad infinitum by countless leftist pundits and politicians including, most bizarrely, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) who suggested that average Americans at town hall meetings who opposed health care reform were secret agents of the health care industry. Is Emperor Palpatine covertly running Kaiser Health Group? Keeping an eye on this country’s corporate overlords can be exhausting. The last time I checked, Halliburton was running America.
As Tucker Carlson once wrote, liberals find it supremely difficult to believe that anyone with whom they disagree could possibly be a decent person. Those who question the science behind climate change aren’t being reasonably skeptical; they’re paid off by the energy companies. Those who abhor federal smoking regulations aren’t concerned about personal freedom; they’re in bed with the tobacco corporations. Those who support the Iraq war have no philosophical justification; they’re all war profiteers. The left always seems to follow the money to its most absurd and paranoid conclusion. Conservatives trip into this fallacy occasionally too, but not nearly as much as liberals.
Let’s play this game for a few minutes.
According to the invaluable Center for Responsive Politics, trial attorneys have an iron grip on the Democratic Party’s purse strings. In 2008, Nancy Pelosi received $218,000 from lawyers. Steny Hoyer pocketed $70,418. For senators the figures were even higher: Harry Reid: $1,882,486; Chris Dodd: $1,902,578; Dick Durbin: 2,016,431. For years, Democrats have blocked any sort of meaningful tort reform that would forbid frivolous lawsuits and limit settlement takes for trial lawyers. Why? Obviously the Democrats are under the thumb of their legal overlords.
The greens are buying influence as well. The national League of Conservation Voters has forked over $110,101 to House Democrats and $56,715 to Senate Democrats, while donating only a small fraction of that to Republicans. Meanwhile, alternative energy companies like National Biofuels, the Solar Energy Industries Association, and the American Wind Energy Association gave $836,850 to Democrats in 2008 and barely a quarter of that to Republicans. No wonder Democrats are so Macchiavellian about ramming through cap and trade legislation. They’re stooges of Big Green!
The Democratic Party is also a wholly paid-for subsidiary of the abortion business. Abortion providers and enablers like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America donate almost exclusively to Democrats in order to keep abortion legal. In 2008, Democrats benefited from an astonishing $2,586,369 in contributions from pro-choice companies. Their biggest recipient? None other than then-Senator Barack Obama, who funded his campaign with $645,501 from abortion.
And that excludes the contributions of countless labor unions, whose list of staggering contributions to Democrats would dwarf this humble blog. By the left’s logic, that money bought the minimum wage increase in 2006 and the fight for Card Check legislation in 2009.
The supposed corruption extends to the White House, which has signed on a constellation of former lobbyists to high positions, despite Obama’s campaign promise to drive those very lobbyists out of Washington forever. Attorney General Eric Holder used to lobby for Covington & Burling, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack lobbied for the National Education Association in 2007, Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary William Corr was an anti-smoking lobbyist, and Treasury Chief of Staff Mark Patterson used to represent Goldman Sachs, among countless others. What’s a God-fearing American citizen to do? Half the executive branch has been bought off!
Or maybe it hasn’t been. Is it possible, perhaps even likely, that the real reason Republicans oppose health care reform and Democrats support abortion rights and green jobs is because of philosophical and pragmatic beliefs? Is it even considerable that most legislators in both parties examine an issue and take a position based on its merit? Is it thinkable that Republicans and Democrats exercise some degree of control over their votes and aren’t just slavishly obeying their industry puppeteers who watch the action on C-SPAN from smoke-filled rooms cackling uncontrollably?
Don’t ask Keith Olbermann. Olbermann is employed by NBC which is owned by General Electric Corporation. In the last election, GE donated $2.9 million to political candidates, 64 percent of which benefitted Democrats.
No wonder he’s such a liberal hack.
