This is why MSNBC’s ratings are in the tank

Well among other things. Just great … and I mean great … video because the Congressman pushes back and makes O’Donnell look like a fool.

Lawrence O’Donnell, the limousine liberal, socially unconscious, perpetually angry substitute anchor for Chris Matthews is ostensibly interviewing Texas Congressman John Culberson on health care. The specific question refers to the woman at the Specter town hall who asks what can be done to restore the constitution which you can see here.

Somehow the conversation drifts into whether Medicare and Social Security are socialism. Culberson attempts to explain the difference between single payer universal crap care and medicare but O’Donnell, playing the part of a grade school bully, has his Irish up and Culberson finally lets him have it.  Just for the record the video below was recorded and edited by us … but the H/T goes to Newsbusters. Thanks.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2Y_hTDkyx4

Not to finish the Congressman’s thoughts but … social security, as we all know, was never meant to be a retirement program. It’s socialism as far as it is a government run social program but it was meant to be a safety net. Insurance, to supplement pensions and retirement, to which each individual bought into with a weekly payment. An annuity. It was designed originally to be self sustaining. It was meant to be your money to protect your retirement against the vagaries of the market. But as you will see whenever politicians can buy a vote, they shamelessly bought them with your SS.

Medicare too, was designed to do what the President says his new system must do; provide health care for the poor, disabled and elderly.  It did the first two fine, and drove the private insurance companies out of the market for the latter.

Government intervention, and opportunistic politicians, over the decades turned it into a vote getter … promising benefits it knew payroll taxes could not cover, to win votes. Combine waste and fraud in the billions annually and it is the perfect example of how the government can turn a necessary program for the poor, disabled and elderly into a vast government wasteland and in the process put this valuable safety net’s very survival in jeopardy.

Like Social Security, Medicare, which so many have come to depend on, has been run with equal abandon and disregard for the very people it was designed to help.

The cost of Medicare is a good place to begin. At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly “conservative” estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion.

And it’s unfunded future liabilities (including those just born this week) total $27 trillion dollars.

Do you actually think they would do anything less if they ran the entire schabang. Please take a moment to read this entire article that was written in 1993 at Reason Magazine. It’s educational, although I doubt O’Donnell will take the time.

Update: This is a perfect example of what happens when conservatives grow a pair and start to push back. The left left polite behind long ago. More and more we are seeing push back like this and its about time. More examples on Tuesday’s show.

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Jim Vicevich

Jim is a veteran broadcaster and conservative/libertarian blogger with more than 25 years experience in TV and radio. Jim's was the long-term host of The Jim Vicevich Show on WTIC 1080 in Hartford from 2004 through 2019. Prior to radio, Jim worked as a business and financial reporter for NBC30 - the NBC owned TV station in Hartford - and as business editor at WFSB-TV in Hartford for 14 years while earning six Emmy nominations and three Telly Awards.

7 Comments

  1. Dimsdale on August 14, 2009 at 7:10 pm

    Lawrence O’Donnell is the living manifestation of reductio ad absurdum,  reducing an argument to its most absurd extent, in order to attempt to render an opponent's argument self contradictory.  Add in rude, and you do indeed have the reason nobody watches MSNBC.  O'Donnell is a pompous ass, which may be an asset for a liberal, but for us normal folk, makes him appear as a rude dolt.

     

    Social Security was probably fine as designed (as a safety net) until 1965, when the politicians decided that the pot of money needed to be made part of the general fund for additional congressional revenue, thus turning it into the ultimate Ponzi scheme.  Another reason why we can't let politicians take over anything else.



  2. Lazybum on August 15, 2009 at 4:20 am

    The scary part about the interview is that the Chris Matthews wannabe (which begs one to ask "why would anyone want to be Chris Mathews?!?!" ) probably went to bed thinking he did a real interview that was coherent.

     

    Kudos to the congressman for speaking truth to semi-power. What a hoot.

     

    And thanks to Jimmy V and his mob for watching MSNBC for all of us so we can watch something productive. Like the Simpsons.



  3. Jeff S on August 15, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    This was basicly the same treatment this poor excuse for a journalist tried to do to the woman from PA.  The way he was going with the way things were at the time the constitition was written, I was waiting him say "Let's bring back slavery,it was here 250 years ago"  I just wonder how this poor excuse for a network even stays on the air.  Oh, that's right, I almost forgot, they love "The One"



  4. donh on August 15, 2009 at 1:39 pm

    Mr. O'Donnell's detailed knowledge of socialist programs going back to German Chancellor Bizmark tells he is true old school socialist like Chris Matthews. The first socialist mayor of a major US city, Emil Siedel, grew up in Germany, and ran with Eugene Debs in 1912. American socialists have strong ties to Germany. Barak Obama even went to Germany and quoted Debs when declaring himself "a citizen of the world" . This same declaration "I am a citizen of the world" was first spoken by Debs when resisting US involvement in WW1. Debs was convicted of treason and sent to jail for sympathizing with the German enemy. This is when being a socialist became unamerican. The party collapsed and its disciples wormed their way into the Democratic party . They have hung out there since the 1930s plotting a marxist utopia under the false mask of a smiley faced democrat some even posing as republicans.



  5. IWorryMyMomWorries on August 15, 2009 at 3:06 pm

    I think Larry O was itching to ask Rep. Culberson if he wanted to repeal Medicare, like he did that woman from the PA town hall, but I think he got a little sidetracked…



  6. gillie28 on August 16, 2009 at 6:17 am

    Well, back with my British relatives so my comment about O'Donnell  "How rude!"  Why anyone goes on Matthew's program is beyond my little brain's understanding.  O'Donnell was one of those nasty, Clinton attack dogs, whose idea of political debate was to go for the jugular and dig up dirt.

    To be fair, I don't like this kind of ridiculousness by political "interviewers" on the right either.  It's just a tlot of hot air and a total waste of time.

    p.s. Portugal's great 🙂



  7. pauldow on August 17, 2009 at 3:54 am

    What's the most difficult job in the world?

    Closed caption encoder for Hardball.



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