Chris Bowers points out the Democrats have put Holy Joe in this position:
Nothing Lieberman is doing would be possible without the ongoing support of the majority of the Democratic caucus. If Democratic Senators wanted to punish Lieberman for his consistent transgressions against the party, they could. If Democrats wanted to use reconciliation, and just circumvent him altogether, they could do that to. But they are not going to do either.
As such, Lieberman is simply taking the power that is being handed to him by the rest of the caucus. Since he knows that Senate Democrats won't ever punish him, and won't ever circumvent him, he now has free reign to dictate whatever legislation he wants, get tons of face time with the White House and Senate leadership, regularly be the top story on news outlets around the country, receive millions in campaign contributions, and appease his Republican base (at this point, most of Lieberman's supporters are Republicans). It is a great deal for Lieberman, and it would not be possible without the ongoing consent of the majority of the Democratic Senate caucus.
Since we have already defeated Lieberman in a Democratic primary, there is clearly nothing more as progressive activists to threaten Lieberman. What we need to start doing is taking action against the Democrats who enable Lieberman and his ilk. If other Senate Democrats are not going to do anything about Lieberman taking control of the entire caucus, then really, what is the difference between those other Senators and Joe Lieberman?
Never thought I would echo George W. Bush, but we have reached the point where it is time to stop differentiating between problematic Senators like Joseph Lieberman and the other Senate Democrats who enable them.
"I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean, obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat," Blair told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast this morning.
Blair is as big a war criminal as Bush and Cheney.
Dr. Attaturk with a corollary:
But in this country Dick Cheney and his spawn are allowed to lie without even being challenged in interviews, let alone be accountable for their war mongering.
Of course, the point that 2009 is on track to be one of the warmest years in the last 160 years or that this decade is the warmest of all or that severe droughts are occurring or that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting faster than expected or that the Arctic Ocean will be free of ice in the summer in many of our lifetimes or that the snows of Kilimanjaro will soon be just a distant memory or that the Andean glaciers are disappearing and that if you want to see glaciers in Glacier National Park, you'd best get a move on makes no impression on the deniers.
What gives our Great Recession its particular darkness — and gives ["Up in the Air"] its haunting afterlife — is the disconnect between the corporate culture that is dictating the firing and the rest of us. In the shorthand of the day, it's the dichotomy between Wall Street and Main Street, though that oversimplifies the divide. This disconnect isn't just about the huge gap in income between the financial sector and the rest of America. Nor is it just about the inequities of a government bailout that rescued the irresponsible bankers who helped crash the economy while shortchanging the innocent victims of their reckless gambles. What "Up in the Air" captures is less didactic. It makes palpable the cultural and even physical chasm that opened up between the two Americas for years before the financial collapse.I have been of the opinion for more than a year that those bastards should have been dragged down to Battery Park and given one of Dr. Guillotine's haircuts. They deserved no less.
The private-equity deal makers who bought and sold once-solid companies like trading cards, saddling them with debt, never saw the workers whose jobs were shredded by their cunning games of financial looting. The geniuses in Washington and on Wall Street who invented junk mortgages and then bundled and sold them as securities didn't live in the same neighborhoods as the mortgagees, small investors and retirees left holding the bag once the housing bubble burst.
Those at the top are separated from the consequences of their actions. They are exemplified by Robert Rubin, formerly of Citigroup and a mentor to both Obama's Treasury secretary and chief economic adviser. He looked the other way when his bank made ruinous high-risk bets, and then cashed out and split, leaving taxpayers to pay for the wreckage while he escaped any accountability. Such economic wise men peer down at the country from a hermetically sealed bubble of privilege and self-interest, much as Ryan does from the plane flying him to his next mass firing. And they tend to think, as Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs notoriously put it, that they are doing "God's work" to sustain our free-market system.
The banks and Wall Street do fill a vital function. But in recent decades, much of what they have done is to engage in variations on "pump and dump" frauds. The mortgage market meltdown was largely due to the bankers and financiers creating an artificially energetic market for garbage securities. The various levels of financial guys, from the low-level mortgage brokers to the thieves who created collateralized mortgage securities all got paid commissions from arranging and finalizing the creation of those toxic securities, leaving the end investors and the property owners holding the bags. Because property values have declined, the owners of those homes can neither sell nor refinance them. The securities are worthless and are dragging down the investors who purchased them.
The middlemen, including Goldman Sachs, all made a shitload of money. They crashed the economy and they are still collecting huge bonuses. That they even have jobs now is due to the fact that we, the American people, acting through our government, bailed them out. But when you hear them talk, it seems as they all think that it was their business acumen, rather than taxpayer dollars, that made them able to not only keep their mansions, their weekend places in the Hamptons, and their damned jobs.
I think the better idea is to invest in pitchfork and tar futures. There may be a huge demand for them.
The Senate went to work on a Sunday — Hanukkah Sunday, we bet! — and desecrated the grave of the Stillborn Jesus to give hundreds of billions of dollars to themselves and their favorite government programs. The bill okays $447 billion for whatever federal agencies plus $650 billion to keep funding teabagger welfare programs such as Medicare, which pointlessly extends the miserable lives of old white people with no money. MORE »
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Repuke family values and the sanctity of marriage
Governor of South Carolina leaves to spend more time hiking the Appalachian Trail with his Argentine mistress.
Leaves his family:
The wife of adulterous a-hole Mark Sanford (R) announced Friday morning she is filing for divorce, saying in a statement that she decided to dissolve her 20-year marriage after "many unsuccessful efforts at reconciliation" with that horny, shriveled faithless bastard.Why does Gov/scumbag Mark Sanford hate Christmas, Republicans?
** snicker **
Rod Jetton, the former Missouri House Speaker arrested for beating and choking his date-rape-drugged mistress Monday, fought to keep a ban on gay sex -- which Jetton called "deviate sexual intercourse."
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Sam Pitts, CEO of WeArePrayingForYou.com has marketed a great idea: a bracelet that vibrates when someone is praying for them.
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This country really is too stupid to live
Via Air America:
A new Gallup poll released today found that President Obama's approval rating continues to dip. But the poll also uncovered a much more disturbing fact: 44 percent of Americans would be happier with George W. Bush back in the White House. My, how quickly we forget.
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Who wants an oh-so-tasty schadenfreude sammich for breakfast?
Mark Madoff, the former co-director of trading at his dad's "investment" firm, has apparently been looking for work in the investment arena (trading desk, trading technology) but hasn't had luck, of course: "He was near tears while describing his feelings about his father, the person added, asking why anyone would bring his son to work at a crooked investment firm." Well, to perpetuate the scheme, of course! In the not-so-shocking news department, the Wall Street Journal reports that Mark Madoff and Andrew Madoff, sons of Ponzi schemer extraordinaire Bernard Madoff, "have been wrestling with what to do next" and have been unsuccessful in landing new jobs.
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