Hagel's enemies: The renenactment of Little Bighorn?

You might wonder how desperately low the psychopathic core of the Republican Party would go until you are reminded that it is flailing in a bottomless pit.

That became obvious once again following President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel to be our next secretary of defense.  On cue, as if on orders from  Gen. Custer,   they angrily surged  before the ever-present TV cameras to denounce the former Republican senator from Nebraska with a series of threats that may yet produce a new swiftboat assault on a decorated war hero.

House majority leader Eric Cantor said he was "profoundly" concerned about the president's choice, declaring Hagel to be an enemy of Israel. (When was the last time that Cantor was profound about anything?)  Sen. Lindsay Graham agreed and called it an "in your face" action by Obama.  Sens. John McCain and Jon Cornyn couldn't find enough words to slam their former colleague.  The sky was falling.

Shame on them, even if they are psychopaths.   All of this nastiness flared just as the final figures of  the popular tally in November gave Obama a five-million vote margin. Oh, and the conservative Log Cabin Republicans came out swinging because Hagel was suspected of being against gays.  You get another whiff of how quickly the "Just say NO"gang mobilizes.

The emptiness of these losers recalls the scene from Cinema Paradiso in which the old film projectionist tells a long rambling  story to his  young companion.  "What does it all mean?" the puzzled boy asks.

"What does it all mean?" the old man gruffily replies.  "It doesn't mean nothing."

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.