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.

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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