Soccer Dad

Jolting joe (and hadassah)

This is putting it mildly:

Mr. Lieberman's positions have infuriated Democrats in a way that those of wavering Democratic senators, such as Nebraska's Ben Nelson and Arkansas's Blanche Lincoln, haven't. Those senators come from conservative states and appear to be searching for ways to support a health overhaul while reflecting their constituents' views.

Mr. Lieberman comes from liberal Connecticut and has announced his opposition in unusually absolutist terms and at critical moments. He says he is speaking out to ensure the bill is sound, while liberals accuse him of seeking to gratify his ego.

"infruriated" seems a bit of an understatement especially considering the vitriol accompanying the criticisms of Sen. Lieberman. And his wife, Hadassah:

Hadassah Lieberman is not and has never been a lobbyist. She did work for some pharmaceutical companies -- Hoffman-La Roche in New York in the 1970s before she married Lieberman, and Pfizer, also in New York, from 1982 to 1985. Later, from 1993 to 1997, she worked for Apco, a global public relations firm that represents corporations, including several drug companies.

More facts: Mrs. Lieberman is not paid in her role as global ambassador for Komen, though she does get a check for consulting work she performs under a separate agreement. According to Komen spokeswoman Pamela Stevens, Komen has never funneled money to pharmaceutical companies. Susan G. Komen grants totaling $450 million have gone to research institutions in the United States and abroad. A separate $900 million has gone to programs in communities worldwide for education, screening and treatment. An additional $50 million will go to research in the coming year.

So, why again should Hadassah Lieberman be fired?

Because Jane Hamsher says so.

Hamsher, who is a cancer survivor, as are other members of her family, apparently has taken her personal suffering and made it personal with Hadassah Lieberman. On her blog, Firedoglake, she launched a campaign for readers to pressure the Komen organization to oust Lieberman. She is also urging Komen-friendly celebrities such as Christie Brinkley and Ellen DeGeneres to do the same.

Whether one agrees with Sen. Lieberman's opposition to certain elements of the Senate health-care bill is a matter of legitimate debate. Democrats are understandably furious with the Senator Formerly Known as a Democrat, now an independent and sometimes a Republican sympathizer. Thanks largely to Lieberman, progressives have had to watch as their single-payer dream became a public option and, now, something closer to a nightmare.

(Question why does Hamsher's vitriol deserve a mention by Ben Smith? Since when does journalism include providing a megaphone to the unhinged?)

And then there's Hamsher's hypocrisy. A few months ago the Komen foundation acquiesced to an Egyptian demand that Israeli researchers be barred from a conference on breast cancer. Even granted that such an event wouldn't have led to any new breakthroughs, Israel is one of the world leaders in cancer research. By agreeing to the ban, the Komen foundation put politics ahead of finding a cure (h/t Israel Matzav). Yet that outrage didn't elicity any response from Hamsher. Her ugly attacks on Lieberman are not principled, but political.

Robert e-mailed me this vicious hit piece from the Daily Beast by Lee Siegel, which concludes:

Let the professional Jews quote the Talmud at me, but the way Lieberman has derived his political morality from his religious fundamentalism, and used both as fig leaves to cover his thralldom to money, is ritually unclean. Some people--for example, the sick and the crippled--might say that it is really not Jewish at all.

One of the premises of Siegel's unhinged diatribe is that Sen. Lieberman is completely in thrall to the insurance industry. And if the insurance industry is simply a handful of fat cat executives pulling in 7 and 8 figure salaries, then perhaps Siegel is correct. But lots of people work for insurance companies: economists, programmers, actuaries, secretaries, clerks and salesman. Raise costs to the industry and fewer of those people will have jobs. So certain is Siegel of his own morality he refuses to acknowledge that there are costs to his position. Economics is described by equations. In insurance hat means if you reduce one side of the equation (earnings) you end up reducing the other side too (benefits). Siegel is as guilty of the "fundamentalism" he accuses Sen. Lieberman of. Sen. Reid's health care reform will make insurance more affordable, keep costs down and not add to the deficit because Siegel "feels" it will accomplish all that. He feels, but he doesn't know.

For more see The Spine and Legal Insurrection.