Lieberman vacates a role as most boring person

With the departure of  Joe Lieberman   from Congress,   I've been poking around the honored rolls to settle on someone to replace him as Capitol Hill's most boring person.  The field is so crowded that the choice didn't come quickly.

 I was leaning toward Newt Gingrich until I remembered that during his bid for the Republican presidential nomination I had already tagged him as Crazy Guggenheim, a title that seemed close enough when he promised to fire all  school janitors and replace them with the students.  (He also promised to put a permanent base on the moon during  his second  term in the Oval Office,  but I couldn't convince myself that there would even be a first term for Newtie.)

Then, there was Jon Husted, Ohio's secretary of state, who droned on and on that his voter restrictions were meant to purify the whole system.  Few believed him, but he droned on and on, defending the indefensible.   We haven't heard that much from him  since his class lost, so no need to drag out the story.

You may be surprised, but my choice for the most boring  politician in our midst is Lindsey Graham, the forever whining South Carolina Republican who was usually seen at Joe Lieberman's side as they traipsed through the trouble spots of the world. He's been back on TV a number of times as his party's  Paul Revere to warn us over and over and over that America is  being consumed by the libs. Unfortunately, he remains in denial about the outcome of the November election.  Even in the few seconds that it takes me to change the channel, I feel a headache coming on.

And I didn't even mention Donald Trump, who at least  is always good for a laugh.




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Lieberman: Count me out. Good!

Joe Lieberman, the Independent/Democratic/Republican senator from Connecticut, says he won't endorse either President Obama or Mitt Romney, announcing his non-participation to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.  Nor would he say how he will vote. "I'm going to try to stay out of this one," he purred.

My only question about this is why would anybody besides Joe's immediate family care?  Now that he's declared his neutrality, we can only hope that we won't hear from him again.

Will Lieberman have a forwarding address?

MY FIRST SERIOUS encounter with Joe Lieberman was no different than anyone else's who sat in front of a TV set in 2000 for what was erroneously billed as a vice presidential candidate debate. The purported contenders pitted Sen. Lieberman, the Democrat, and Dick Cheney, the Republican. Instead, we witnessed an embarrassingly vapid conversation during which Lieberman played pattycake with his sly political counterpart.

Connecticut Joe, who offered no more than a rubbery smile and the bedside manner of Dr. Welby, was Al Gore's greatest blunder (equaling that of John McCain's in 2008!). It was not until much later that we learned the 2000 campaign was no more than a dress rehearsal for Lieberman's plan to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. The Democratic voters had other ideas and the senator caused no more than a ripple in the primaries.

That rejection is said to have left him so bitter that he became McCain's shoulder-to-shoulder pal against Barack Obama in 2008 - even showing up to endorse him at the Republican convention. You had to wonder. Did he silently believe that McCain might tap him for veep? I don't know. But Lieberman's track record of see-sawing in his allegiance offers a strong case that he had it in mind.

Well, he has announced that he won't seek a fifth term in 2012 and I can only say good riddance, even if we have to wait two more years. Having switched to the independent slot while caucusing with the Democrats, he fashioned his new life on Capitol Hill by shaking down the Democratic leaders with the threat that unless he held on to the chairmanship of homeland security, he might just start pattycaking with the GOP again. With a hair-thin margin of error in the Senate, the Democrats wouldn't risk it.

So he is back where he wants to be, in front of the TV people. And as recently as yesterday, he was defending his hawkish support of the invasion of Iraq with his version of the facts that have long been destroyed. From President Obama, who was betrayed by Lieberman, on down the pecking order, Democrats have dished out pro forma praise of Lieberman while such conservative pundits as David Brooks have applauded Lieberman's independence. But, again I wonder. Brooks insists the Democrats would be nowhere in advancing their key issues such as health care and the stimulus package if Lieberman had not been on board for critical votes. But would fiercely independent Joe have changed his mind if he didn't retain his committee chair?

The answer should be obvious. When hasn't he planted himself in the main arena on any issue to meet his own self-absorbed need for attention? He now says he wants to start a new chapter in his life. We can only guess what that will - or won't - be. After all, he still has time to change his mind to seek another term.

The latest coiffure spill: Sen. Boxer's hairstyle

IN MY HUMBLE and imperfect effort to keep you up on the deeper issues involved in Political Planet 2010, I have assembled a few post-election tschotschkes for your scrapbook:

Three have become a crowd in the California political races. Carly is put off by Barbara's hairstyle, casually asking, "God, what is that hair?" Carly also thinks it was "bizarre" for Meg to appear on Sean Hannity's program. Carly (Fiorino) is the Republican candidate for the Senate against Barbara (Boxer), the Democrat. Meg (Whitman) is the Republican candidate for governor against a fellow familiarly known as Moonbeam (Jerry Brown), the Democrat. And this is only June.

Meanwhile, back in South Carolina, the fictitious Democratic Party is deservedly embarrassed that a mystery man on the party's ticket won the Senate primary. It was enough to note that Alvin Greene didn't campaign, nor spend any money, and has a felony charge pending against him. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) stormed that Greene was a "plant" and should be kicked off the ticket. "There were some real shenanigans going in the South Carolina primary," Clyburn said on a radio show. "I don't know if he was a Republican plant; he was someone's plant." Whatever comes of it in a state where shenanigans begin in the beleaguered governor's office, it won't make any difference. Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who makes so many foolish statements sinply because he is foolish, is expected to win by acclamation.

Up in Connecticut, Joe Lieberman has created a mini-version of What-will-LeBron James-do?by telling the media that he hasn't decided on whether to endorse Republican Linda McMahon, the Midas-rich wrestling promoter whose pastime focussed on blood and gore. Joe, who remains an "independent" in a wiggly construction of the meaning, said he didn't want to consider her life before she retired from the ring six months ago. but will give her strong consideration for the past half-year of her life. Excepting for the tail-wagging media, Joe, nobody cares. (On the other hand, do you think LeBron will stay in Cleveland? Huh?)

Finally, there's Michael Steele, who is stilling hanging around, rushing to the defense of Nevada Republican senate wannabe, Sharron Angle. "I feel good about what Sharron Angle will bring to the Senate," he glows. What she will bring, Mike, are staunch endorsements by the newly minted Tea Party and an outfit called Oath Keepers, whose militant members vow to take up arms against the federal government on matters of their choosing. So now we can include Michael Steele, who has had problems advancing on his learning curve, and the Republican National Committee squarely behind an unapologetic extremist that supports anarchy - a condition that seems to affect the whole of the GOP today. She did, however, get more votes than another candidate who wanted to offer physicians chickens in lieu of cash to revive old-fashioned bartering.

Joe is on the prowl again for coverage

Keep an eye on Joe Lieberman, folk. He's making news again. This time, he is proposing something called a Terrorist Expatriation Act. That forms an acronym of TEA. Get it? The measure would permit eliminating the citizenship of anybody that the State Department believes might be a member of a terrorist organization. In these worrisome times, it might sound good - but even conservatives like Rep. John Boehner fear it is going too far. For Lieberman, however, he might just be thinking that if the Republicans regain control of the senate in November, he would have some talking points to caucus with the GOP. Now an independent caucusing with the Democrats after supporting the McCain presidential run, Lieberman always keeps his political options open. Like a pendulum, no less.

Texting Lieberman: Your role has been eliminated

AS WE SAT through the timely film, "Up in the Air,", with its wrenching cold-blooded scenes in which George Clooney and Anna Kendrick matter-of-factly informed employes at various companies that their jobs have been eliminated, I kept waiting for Sen. Joe Lieberman to turn up. He, as you've probably heard, was one of the big losers in that blast in Massachusetts. As one of the leading purveyors of the Hobson's Choice that eventually shredded the health reform bill - Joe's version or no version - he was able to blackmail the Democratic caucus by holding it hostage to his vote to deny a filibuster. Now that the score is 59-41 or less, Joe's bargaining power on the street is worthless. His role as a smarmy Independent go-between has been eliminated, leaving in its wake a lot of wounded Democrats who bowed to his demands to salvage the bill. Let's hope that the Democrats can muster what little courage they still have to kick him out of the caucus and strip him of his committee chairmanship.... So long, Joe. It wasn't good to know you.

At this rate, the future was yesterday

HOW OPTIMISTIC can we be about the future of a nation that refuses to act decisively on its most critical domestic issues? Ho, Ho, Ho. Not very. The issues are plain to see: the raging costs of health care, global warming, the environment, education, the widening gulf between rich and poor, Wall Street - all of these and others have have created a caustic political divide that won't be bridged in this generation, nor maybe the next.

The problem is, sound doesn't travel in a vacuum. Any reasonable attempt to invite the Party of No into the mainstream of rational discussion is futile, as President Obama has finally learned the hard way. When you have a phalanx of racial, religious and broadcast crackpots barging in at every progressive idea on the table, what will change the landscape? I can't think of anything. The old concept of nation-building is now a concept of nation-razing. Is that over-the-top logic? Well, how about this: A recent poll reported that 66 pct. of Republicans say they would vote for Sarah Palin for president. That's the vacuum where sound dies.

Palin and many of her righteous rightists scoff at global warming as evidence mounts that some South Pacific islands live under the constant threat of flooding from rising sea waters. As the Arctic icecap melts, polar bears are slimmer these days as they amble about for food and safer havens. You don't have to be a friend of polar bears to realize that something quite serious is happening. The anti-warming gang sniffs that it is "junk science" when a great majority of scientists insists that an oncoming catastrophe is probable. On the other hand, even the Bible suggests the planet will not be around forever. Should we be planning for that day?

For too many politicians, the future of the planet and your grandchildren doesn't matter beyond the next election as the ascendent cash-flow lobbyists do the thinking for their political recipients. It has been shown that a fair number of senators and congressmen who oppose health-care reform are doing the bidding for their caregivers on K Street. The powerful lobbies will be the last groups standing as the planet disappears.

With few exceptions the national media that once boasted of James Reston, Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite have not only been political patsies within the prescribed ideological guidelines of their corporate owners, but also have fashioned an entirely new world of scatterbrained stars like Palin, Michele Bachmann and Joe Lieberman whose virulent mediocrity has carried them a long way on the national media dole. Bachmann, you may recall, asked her cheering throngs to cut their wrists if that's what it took to stop health care reform. This week she shouted at a D.C. rally that the anti-reform crowd had formed the charge of the light brigade. It became necessary to remind her later that the charge of the British cavalry into the Russian lines was one of the dumbest and most disastrous military decisions on record.

If there is faint hope that the we will survive all of this, maybe it will come from what Conan Doyle dismissively said of the new art of his day: "One should put one's shoulder to the door and keep out insanity all we can."

Well, it's worth a try.

The 'Joe' complex is getting to me

FOLKS, I'M getting a "Joe" complex. Mention Joe to me during this Christmas season and I cringe. I know you're not talking about Mary's husband. My complex began during the 2008 presidential campaign when John McCain used Joe the Plumber to fill in the wide gaps of his uninspired campaign. After the election, I figured that was the end of that nonsense. But now we have Joe the Zelig Lieberman. And it tells you something about the awful state of American politics today.

The current Joe is a pathetic human being who has moled way into the Democratic caucus and held it captive while he does the minority Republicans' dirty work. However, as he has continued to pull aces from his sleeve, the word has finally sunk in to the spent Good Samaritans among the Democrats that you wouldn't dare hand him a pin in the midst of gas filled birthday balloons. How can you trust a guy who spent this week condemning a Medicare expansion that he was championing 3 months ago? With his talent for bait-and-switch, he could have taken on the entire Medici family.

But now, finally, he is getting a taste of his own foul medicine. There are calls that he be recalled from office, although that is more symbolic than realistic. Connecticut does not provide for recalls. Rabbis have beseeched him to get out of the way of the health care reform bill. The Connecticut on-line news papers have riddled him with invective. Protestors have shown up to picket his home. Unkind things are being said about his wife, Hadassah. His rubbery smile has become a whimper.

His response is not surprising. He's being victimized by his enemies, he says. He's only serving his conscience. That's the Pat Robertson gambit: the evil people are victimizing Christians.

Joe doubtless knows more about what's in the Bible than I do. But I do know that somewhere it says, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Right, Joe? But not soon enough.

Joe lit up the health-care industry's cigars Sunday

WELL, Sen . Joe Lieberman must have gone to bed quite pleased with himself Sunday night. He succeeded, as is his wont, in making headlines all over the Internet as well as the New York Times as the potential destroyer of the health care reform bill. It reaffirmed his image as the Zelig-in-Chief in the wearying months-long congressional debate, telling Senate Majority leader Harry Reid eyeball-to eyeball that the bill hasn't made enough concessions to Republicans so he will join a filibuster to stop it in his tracks. Concessions to Republicans? And Joe considers himself a deeply religious man!

The Connecticut Independent (Huh!) has become an expert at blackmailing the Democratic leadership while retaining a committee chairmanship in the Democratic caucus. My hunch is that he will continue to play this ugly role until the November 2010 election, counting on a Republican senate majority that will swab him with political gravy. Inasmuch as he's already forfeited his honor, he's got nothing worthwhile to lose.

Meantime, we are told that poor women are being denied cancer screenings in a growing number of states whose health-care funds are shrinking. In Ohio, for example, the Cancer Society reported that a $2.5 million allocation in 2008-09 for such screening has been cut to$700,000 in 2009-10. It's a brutal thought, but as the opponents of health care reform might shrug and tell you, "You just can't keep everybody from dying."

And if you woke up Monday morning with a rotten odor in the air, that was from the cigars that the folks at the insurance companies and pharmaceuticals lit up to celebrate their guy Lieberman's careful attention to their requests.

A Palin-Lieberman dream ticket?

SARAH PALIN'S book tour in Iowa over the week end prompted her to continue to drop hints that she will be a serious candidate for president in 2012. Indeed there seems to be no hesitancy by some of the pundits to suggest that she's already a candidate. She's hanging out with her loyal enthusiasts wherever she turns up as a literary novice, many of whom quite likely will never turn a page in her book. Just as well. Volumes have already been written itemizing the factual errors in her tome, which I gather is about rogues and stuff. Maybe she actually meant it to be a fantasy.

It appears the only question remaining as she reaps her own whirlwind around the country is who will be her running mate? (It's still 2009, but isn't this fun?) So allow me to speculate with the paid political analysts in the trade and suggest that the shortest list should be headed by Joe Lieberman, who would take no more than a few minutes to put on his game face if she looked in his direction.

Joe has been standing in the wings since he ran as Al Gore's sidekick in 2000. It was during his mock debate with Dick Cheney that Lieberman's talent as the deal-breaker with Gore became the vapid sideshow of the whole campaign. He spent so much time sucking up to Cheney that it was fair to consider whether George Bush had managed the preposterous tandem of two vice presidents on his ticket. It also added to the senator's luster as a chameleon ready to emerge in another campaign down the road. Republican, Democrat, it didn't matter. Still doesn't.

You may recall from the last episode that Joe is puffed up these days to block the health care reform bill because he cares so much about people. It gives him the kind of prominence that the the Palin crowd can't ignore. At the same time, Palin, who has not yet outgrown her tales of the Alaskan steppes, needs a guy with his experience and brand on a national ticket. It could be billed as Beauty and the Least, and the Tea Baggers would arrive with signs and epithets and all while Joe grinned from ear to ear, satisfied that somebody finally values him as much as he values himself.

Clip and save. Remember where you first heard of this confluence of two religiously devout candidates. It would be an historic ecumenical and gender moment in American politics spanning the nation from Juneau to Hartford, with maybe a moose or two in between.

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Joe's a multiple choice politician

JOE LIEBERMAN, the protean politician, a.k.a Zelig, continues to turn up in public to defend his thesis that (1) he wants health care reform because there are unfortunate souls among us who don't have insurance and desperately need it and (2) he will support a filibuster that will essentially kill any reforms in the current congress because his conscience tells him to do it. That sort of thinking is commonly called cognitive dissonance and Lieberman is in the top tier of those who manage to get by each day on their never-ending reliance on psychobabble.

For one thing, Joe knows as well as anybody that to kill the bill and start all over again would take us back to where we've been before - for decades, and may not return until long after he will be enjoying his retirement on a senator's many perks. Where his conscience fails him is his insistence in protecting the very health care industry with which his wife was closely associated for more than three decades.

But he , like some of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle who have the same conflicts of interest, don't allow that to trouble his spirit. He just soldiers on, wherever a TV camera crosses his path, repeating his credo day after day, always full of warm reassurances that he only wants to do what's right for America. But the real problem is that political hypocrites like Lieberman are what's wrong with America.

Rabbi Fish: The Lieberman 'incongruity'..

HAVING REFERRED to Sarah Palin's travel adventures in the previous post, it seems to be a natural fit to continue here with Joe Lieberman's latest setback in his ubiquitous road show to become somebody's - anybody's - vice presidential nominee in 2012. Joe has tried it a number of ways, as a theocratic conscience-driven politician, as a Republican in a Democrat's clothes, as an independent in the sneaky attire of Republicans and Democrats, and as an unsuccessful presidential (2004)and vice presidential candidate (2000). Now he may have stretched his luck a bit too far in his home state of Connecticut. More than 70 of the state' religious leaders, Christian and Jewish, want him to put his spiritual commitments where his mouth is and endorse the health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who says he is an "observant Jew," insists he not only opposes it but also is committed to supporting a filibuster to impede its passage. He considers it a well spent day's work for God.

But Rabbi Ron Fish, leader of the Concerned Clergy of Connecticut, has other ideas. Says Fish (courtesy of Think Progress): "In this case, Sen. Lieberman so regularly invokes his religion and his 'conscience' to support his positions that I felt it was important that we called him on the incongruity of his position on health care and his faith."

I think a better word, rabbi, is hypocrisy - which hasn't bothered Lieberman in the past and probably won't now. He wants to keep getting invited back to his caregivers at Fox News.

Get out the CliffsNotes for Lieberman's conscience

SHOULD WE have the benefit of CliffsNotes to understand Joe ( Zelig) Lieberman's holier-than-Obama's explanation of why he will join a filibuster against the health care reform bill just passed in the House? Joe is now telling people that he must act according to his conscience. Once-Democrat Joe has shifted back and forth politically and wormed a committee chair from feckless Democrats who figured he would be helpful as an independent in their caucus.. This was a conscience-driven Zelig who became John McCain's obsequious water boy and spoke adoringly of the Republican candidate without ever convincing many people that he knew what he was talking about. Could he have been thinking of a vice presidential nomination?

Considering the subplot to his conscientious opposition to the health care bill it is fair to ask how much his conscience governed him in view of the fact that his wife Hadassah has a history of working in the neighborhood of pharmaceutical and insurance companies through her paid association with Hill & Knowlton, the giant lobbying outfit, as well as others. As columnist Joe Conason has pointed out, "For most of the past three decades, Hadassah Lieberman has been employed by either pharmaceutical companies or the lobbying firms that represent them..."

How inconvenient for the family that Barack Obama, the man who beat Joe's candidate by more than 9 million votes, has dedicated the first year of his presidency to a public option plan that is anathema to the health care industry! How inconvenient for a chickenhawk like Lieberman , who put no limit on the Iraq war costs, that his conscience now tells him to oppose spending Federal dollars on uninsured Americans! When Lieberman speaks with such mock sincerity of conscience-driven decisions, he's not only a liar, but a disgusting creepy-crawly one at that.

P.S. I can't complain about Lieberman's cohort, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who also is against the bill. Graham is from South Carolina, of course, a state that has offered the national government and America's sanity nothing but grief. For him, it must be genetic.

Advice for Obama by the barrel

PRESIDENT OBAMA is getting so much post-election advice from all sides today that he may have to invoke the Bush Rule: Slip off to a big ranch in Texas for some extended R&R and isolated meditation. Hey, it turned Dubya into a motivational speaker for pay. Clearly, with all of the rush to judgment, Obama needs to consult an oracle that will satisfy everybody, pro and con, which is what oracles do. Look what it did for Zelig Lieberman.

Joe Lieberman: The Senate's Zelig is back

Attaboy, Joe. ( Lieberman, not the plumber.)

The always-evolving Independent senator from Connecticut seems forever inspired by his own smarmy political pieties and will again cross the congressional Rubicon to support a Republican filibuster against an opt-out health care reform bill. Joe has been a master of such happy-face gamesmanship on the Hill, pretending that he is holding a full house against the other side's four-card flush. So with his characteristic rubbery smile and reassuring bedside manner, Joe has again set himself up as the conscience of those honorable pols who rise to the defense of the nation (except, of course, those souls who have no health insurance.)

As a hawkish senator who avoided military service himself, he was once a Democrat who then charged into his friend John McCain's presidential campaign with spear and shield to wipe out Iraq, help the Republican candidate with Jewish voters and perhaps get a tidy vice presidential nod from the GOP. Having failed on all counts, Joe proudly retained his independence, but deftly played his hollow hand to literally blackmail unthinking Democrats into allowing him to caucus with the victorious party - a party, by the way, that mindlessly counted on his vote to override any Republican filibusters in the Senate! (How ironic!) They gave him his very own committee chairmanship and sheepishly said nice things about him.(Democrats may not be the party of sleeve-worn religion, but they do turn the other cheek to their own peril. )

His mercurial tactics may drive his old party to despair but it has made him one of Fox News iconic foster children, for whom he once described his political philosophy. Get this:

"I'm a Harry Truman, JFK, Scoop Jackson, Bill Clinton Democrat."

That there were varying degrees of difference among that quartet illustrate Lieberman's own warmed-over waffles, depending upon the moment. Let it be said that Lieberman's bizarre political initiatives are not totally ideological - not when he has received more than $1.6 million from the health care industry, including the invasive well-provided pharmaceuticals. He's been family-deep in the hands of health reform opponents. His wife Hadassah was on the lobbying payroll of companies for which Lieberman has bartered his soul. That's the short version.

Benignly concerned Joe is now in the front of the line, hardly as an independent thinker but as the leading teeter-totter in the Senate - a former Democrat, a happy-go-lucky cheerleader of the Republican presidential candidate, and now an Independent with a Democratic chairmanship and a valued Republican ear. For a Zelig of his skill, you can't do much better than that.

Attaboy, Joe. You can even boast to friends and family that you had been the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2000, albeit again on the losing side. When the painful filibuster debate arrives, you may even be offered your own show on Fox News. Keep smiling.

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If it sounds like madness....

IN HER book, A Distant Mirror, a voluminous account of the troubled 14th Century, Barbara Tuchman writes of the collapse of French King Charles VI's mind - insanity. "Madness," she keenly observes, "was familiar in the Middle Ages in all its varieties."

In some respects, I find that consoling to those of us who have been forced to witness a total collapse of some of those weaker links who are trying to infuse the public with the evils of public health insurance. Since President Obama took office and continued to raise a subject that carried him through his election campaign, his opponents are all but resorting to the Medieval culprits of witchcraft and sorcery to deceive the public.

The vanguard of opposition includes some Medicare-eligible (!) Republican and Democratic senators who could care less about the wisdom of single payer health care than they do about putting Obama in his place. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the witless Iowa Republican, has been changing his position on health care reform by the hour, first scaring his town hall audience that you can throw your grandma under a bus, or wherever, with a provision in the bill that Sarah Palin narrowed down with the simplicity that even a moose could appreciate - death panel. Then Grassley sort of recanted by lying, asserting that it was the Obama crowd that was guilty of overplaying the "death panel" card while he was trying to play with a full deck. Finally, he insisted that when he spoke to his town hall, he was merely repeating Obama's words and meant no harm by it. The man insults himself and all mindfully alert 75-year-olds every time he sets out to explain what he last said by contradicting himself. .

Next comes Sen. Max Baucus, the conservative Montana Democrat who has a death lock on his Senate Finance Committee that's working on a bill. But he may want to check his state's latest polls. Not encouraging for his line of work.

I was beginning to enjoy some relief from the absence of Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut's hybrid contribution of a man for all seasons - Democrat, McCain supporter, Independent. A moralistic whiner, Joe was back on the tube Sunday maintaining that although health care is a serious moral concern, Obama-style health care reform should wait for a fix until after the recession, whenever that may be. But he could change his mind tomorrow.

Finally, there were John McCain and Orrin Hatch, two septuagenarians who say a health-care bill would be ready to pass if Sen. Ted kennedy were in charge of its fate. Minor problem: Back in the 90s, when Kennedy did offer a plan, McCain and Hatch voted against it.

It's maddening. Clearly not all of the farmers are in their dells these days. Back in the days of Mad King Charles all sorts of quacks came forward with their miracle potions to restore his mind. Today, the opposite is true. It's the quacks who are in need of the miracle potions.

Lieberman's brain runs dry

I HAD RESISTED piling on poor  Sen. Joe Lieberman because I'm really not a bad guy when you get to know me.  But when he said a couple of extraordinarily contradictory things, I felt it was necessary to resurrect him from McCain's ashes from the last presidential campaign.  I was constrained to give him not one, but two,  Grumpy Abe  Linguistic Lunacy Awards (GALL) - the first such double honor of the year, which will qualify him for the annual GALL Award in December.   Take a look:

Joining his  road-show pals McCain and Lindsay Graham,  Lieberman signed on to a letter to President Obama  regarding waterboarding and other means of torture that said:

"We have also strongly  opposed the overly coercive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that these memos deemed legal."

However, two days earlier,  ensconced in his comfort zone at Fox News, Lieberman said:

"Well, I take a minority position on this.  Most people think it's definitely torture.  The truth is, it has  mostly a psychological impact on people....We ought to be able to use something like waterboarding.

Uh, he did say that it was a terrible thing to do if we had to do it.  But...

Sorry, Joe.  You lost me at the last trickle.  Waterboarding is not good to the last drop.  

   

A chameleon returns

I HOPE THE Democrats in Congress knew what they were doing when they agreed to reward Joe Lieberman for his chameleon-like behavior in  this year's presidential campaign.  Whatever deal he made with the Democrats to hold on to his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee  will last only until he finds it convenient to break it.    Lieberman, in turns, has been a peacenik who became a hawk , a Democrat who became an Independent who supported Republican John McCain , and a senatorial candidate in Connecticut who enlisted Barack Obama's support only to betray  Obama as  McCain's slippery-tongued ally with an eye on a big job in a Republican administration that was only a failed dream. 

When it served his purpose Lieberman praised radical Muslim Louis Farrakhan , saying,  "I have respect for him...I admire what Minister Farrakhan is doing."  On the other hand, he found the Rev. Wright to be a political handicap for Obama, one of many ways he went after the eventual  president-elect.   Lieberman's dance mode has been watched over the years by many who find it repugnantly shameful.  Hear what Colin McEnroe, a home-state columnist for the Hartford Courant and radio personality had to say about his senator:  

"The way you always knew that Joe Lieberman was the kind of guy who 'rises above'  politics was that he always told you so.  The way you knew he wasn't was to watch him the rest of the time."

With his characteristic rise to the occasion, Lieberman said  the Senate's action was "fair and forward behavior".  Right, Joe.   On the other hand he had said that any attempt to strip him of his Homeland Security chair would have been "unacceptable".  To whom?  To him.  See what I mean?