Georgia U.S. Rep. Paul Broun is a doctor and an over-the-top Congressional rhetorician. He likened the effort to reform health care to the effort to free the salves— and that was a comparison meant to suggest the effort was a bad thing. He called it another “Yankee war of aggression.” Now he says he opposes energy legislation that would cut down on green house gasses because it would result in the mass death of old people. He doesn’t want to get overly technical but, because he’s a doctor, he explains the legislation will result in a plague of hyperthermia. That’s doctor-speak for death panel.
A lot of old people in Georgia and Florida and all out throughout the southeast and the southwest are dependent on air conditioning just to live. And if their electricity bills go sky high, as the energy tax is gonna make it happen, if that ever passes there are a lot of people that can’t afford to run their air conditioning any more and a lot of people are gonna have a hard time with hyperthermia is what I call it – what we call it in medicine as a medical doctor – which means that their body temperature’s gonna go up, they’re gonna have dehydration, and people are gonna have a lot of problems. And it’s gonna have a greater impact on our health care system and people are gonna die because of that. But it’s gonna kill jobs too.
Update: This is the same Paul Broun, by the way, who is now trying to blame the 2008 financial industry bailout on Democrats– or at least on Republican Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who in Broun’s imagination was really a Democrat.
“I wanted to put some perspective on 2008, too. That’s when the President’s chief economic adviser — I guess the Treasury Secretary — told him that the sky was falling and that we needed to pass the Toxic Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which many Republicans voted against. I didn’t buy the Democratic Treasury Secretary under a Republican President because that’s exactly what Hank Paulson is.”
Hank Paulson a Democrat? In doctor-speak, this is what’s called bull shit.
As Steve Benen points out, the idea that Bush and Cheney would choose a Democratic Treasury Secretary is beyond absurd– in fact so absurd it’s brilliantly revealing in what it says about the bipartisan bowed and scraping approach to the finance industry.
Benen recalls the reality of the bailout nation:
The [TARP] bailout enjoyed support from the administration (Bush and Cheney), the House Republican leadership (Boehner, Cantor, and Blunt), the Senate Republican leadership (McConnell and Kyl), the Republican presidential ticket (McCain and Palin), and assorted, high-profile conservative voices (Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck).
Hat tip on the Broun video to Gawker.
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