One Last Reason to Hate Joe Lieberman (I-CT)

They say you can tell a lot about a man by the fake pandemics he supports. So I really don't know why I was surprised to find Joe Lieberman had, of course, introduced the Bird Flu Bill.

The fake-Democratic Senator from Connecticut thought it was crucial taxpayers spend $50 million tracking the fake pandemic, which the bill inaccurately says could easily mutate into a human-to-human transmittable form. The experts beg to differ. But why should we expect a narcisist who won't accept the results of his own party's primary - the primary he chose to run in - to accept medical reality? What's worse, it's not even his usual depressive-yet-panicked behavior that is behind this bill, it is his whore-like relationship to the John that is the pharmaceutical industry.

And this is nothing knew for the pouty Lieberman. According to the Boston Globe:

Lieberman has accepted more campaign money from insurance companies in the current election cycle than any other senator, and has taken the third-highest amount of drug company contributions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Washington Post similarly noted:

When Lieberman co-founded a campaign group called the New Democrat Network... drugmakers and health insurers stepped in as major supporters. Aetna Inc. and Travelers insurance have been the two largest donors this year.

AIG and Cigna were next in line.

So why has Joe consistently been the only Democrat on Big Pharma's Christmas List? And what does it mean if he holds pharma stocks, and his wife was policy director for Pfizer? And what if, coincidentally, he's the guy who sponsors legislation so that Pfizer can extend their patent on the epilepsy drug Neurontin? Doesn't that allow Pfizer and others to spike their prices, adding to the rising cost of healthcare that he "deplores" so much?

And so what if he's the guy shilling for Bush's illusory Bird Flu pandemic, throwing away $50 million of your money on hype so the company Rumsfeld used to run gets rich making the non-vaccine? What about all this? Does it make him wrong? Or does it just make him Joe Lieberman... Everyone's Favorite Independent.