Goodbye to Traitor Joe Lieberman

Farewell Joe Lieberman! The only good thing to come out of the 2000 election debacle is that you were never one heartbeat away from the Presidency. And I say that as someone who voted for you then realized later we didn't know enough about you.

For instance, in 2009 Lieberman earned the nickname "Traitor Joe" for joining the Republican filibuster against universal health care. Why? Because he was so well-funded by the Insurance Industry, and didn't want to upset them.

There was even a Limerick Written About Him:

A Limerick For Traitor Joe
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Joe Lieberman’s meanness runs deep.
He’s a back-stabbing, Dem-screwing creep,
Who’s determined to kill
The health reform bill.
But at least he will never be VEEP.

Paul Begala on Traitor Joe

. . . the “I” does not stand for "Independent." It stands for "Insurance Industry."

Lieberman says he will join a Republican filibuster against President Obama's health-insurance reforms. You could see this coming from a mile away—actually from 15 years away.

In 1993 and 94, Lieberman consistently opposed President Clinton's reform bill—which did not have a public option. In case you're keeping score at home, Lieberman will filibuster the Obama plan, which has a public option, and he opposed the Clinton reform plan, which did not. Anything that protects consumers, it seems, is a bridge too far for Sen. Lieberman.

Lieberman sided with insurance companies against sick people, and with insurance companies against citizens who want to sue to protect their rights in court. As The New York Times reported, "Many of Mr. Lieberman's friends said he had no alternative but to take this position because it was the one favored by the insurance industry. The industry is important to Connecticut's economy and has generously donated to Mr. Lieberman's campaigns over the years."

More recently, Lieberman joined with his two amigos, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, in some happy warmongering, which they all enjoy so much.
Alex Pareene on Salon

The three amigos of death are back with a hot new Washington Post joint editorial, and you’ll never guess what they’re recommending this time! (War.)

Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., are three of the most respected foreign policy experts in all of Washington. They became three of the most respected foreign policy experts in Washington by following a simple, one-step plan: Always demand more war, everywhere.

Back in 2009, Lieberman suddenly wanted to go bomb-bomb-bomb Iran, sounding much like Republican warmonger Mitt Romney during the election instead of an Ex-Democratic Independent:
From CBS News

"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq," Lieberman told Bob Schieffer. "And to me, that would include a strike into... over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

The Independent former Democrat from Connecticut said that he was not calling for an invasion of Iran, but he did say the U.S. should target specific training camps.
"I think you could probably do a lot of it from the air, but they can't believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans," Lieberman said.

Lieberman, who has been one of Congress's most outspoken supporters of the Bush administration's Iraq war policies, said that continuing the fight in Iraq and confronting Iran are necessary for achieving a wider peace in the Middle East.
If the U.S. does not act against Iran, "they'll take that as a sign of weakness on our part and we will pay for it in Iraq and throughout the region and ultimately right here at home," Lieberman said.

Dana Milbank on WaPo: Joe's Sad Send-Off

It was a lonely farewell for Joe Lieberman.

When the senior senator from Connecticut stood to give his parting address Wednesday afternoon, just one of his colleagues, Delaware Democrat Tom Carper, was with him on the Senate floor.

Lieberman was excommunicated by his party (he won as an independent in 2006 after losing the Democratic primary) and retired this year rather than face probable defeat. Yet he received little love from the Republicans, either, because despite his apostasies on key issues — the Iraq war, above all — he remained a fairly reliable vote for the Democrats.

The sparse attendance wasn’t unusual for a farewell speech, but it was a sad send-off for a man who was very close in 2000 to becoming a major figure in American political history as the first Jew on a major party’s national ticket. He was denied the vice presidency not by the voters but by the Supreme Court. As he joked in his farewell speech, he was “grateful to have received a half-million more votes than my opponent on the other side — but that’s a longer story.”

Six years later, he was drummed out of his party because of his willingness to embrace Republicans (he received a kiss from George W. Bush after a State of the Union address).

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Cease Fire in Gaza

The world can be thankful for this today:

via LA Times

Egypt announced a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas effective Wednesday evening local time, the Associated Press reported.

In details of the agreement obtained by news agency, Israel will cease all military activity against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip at 9 p.m. local time (11 a.m. PST) and Palestinian militants will cease rocket attacks into Israel. After 24 hours of quiet, Gaza's border crossings with Israel will be opened further to allow freer movement of goods and people.

The announcement by Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton followed talks in Cairo between Clinton and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.

The End of the Romney Campaign

And I won't be sorry to see it go! Buh-Bye, folks!

New York Times: Career Options

After three decades of remarkably seamless career hopping — from Bain Capital to the Olympic Games, from governor of Massachusetts to constant candidate for president — Mr. Romney is now a restless chief executive with no organization to run.

. . . At a breakfast on Wednesday for top advisers and donors, Mr. Romney marveled at the Obama campaign’s ability to turn out such a large volume of voters on Election Day, though at times by using strategies that he said had unfairly maligned him.

He did little to hide his frustration and pique: he bemoaned attempts by the president and his allies to characterize him as an enemy of women, singling out advertisements that claimed he opposed contraception and abortion in all cases. That, Mr. Romney said, is simply untrue, according to those at the breakfast.

He even took a gentle swipe at the news media, mocking what he said were inaccurate articles suggesting that his oldest son, Tagg, had staged an intervention to fix a tottering campaign and was playing a heavy role in shaping political strategy.

“He will be sifting through this for quite a while,” said Kirk Jowers, a Romney friend. “The question is when the sifting takes a couple of hours a day instead of being all consuming.”

. . . “I know he will do something,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a longtime Romney political adviser. “I just don’t know what it will be.”

Romney Transition Campaign Website That Won't Come True:


CBS News: Romney Wasn't Prepared to Lose

. . . it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.

After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.

"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."

. . . Romney was stoic as he talked to the president, an aide said, but his wife Ann cried. Running mate Paul Ryan seemed genuinely shocked, the adviser said. Ryan's wife Janna also was shaken and cried softly.

"There's nothing worse than when you think you're going to win, and you don't," said another adviser. "It was like a sucker punch."

. . . Both wives looked stricken, and Ryan himself seemed grim. They all were thrust on that stage without understanding what had just happened.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser said of Romney.

GQ: How the Secret Service Said Goodbye to Romney

At some point, early Wednesday morning, when Gov. Mitt Romney and family were tucked into bed, a quiet call went out on the radio channel used by his Secret Service agents: "Javelin, Jockey details, all posts, discontinue."

Of all the indignities involved in losing a presidential race, none is more stark than the sudden emptiness of your entourage. The Secret Service detail guarding Governor Romney since Feb 1. stood down quickly. He had ridden in a 15-car motorcade to the Intercontinental Hotel in Boston for his concession speech. He rode in a single-car motorcade back across the Charles River to Belmont. His son, Tagg, did the driving.

. . . When the race was close, agents would joke about the number of "j" words they'd need to come up with in order to give every one of his children, their wives, and all of their children code names. That's 29 people who would have received, if not protection, at least a protective survey and recommendations from the Service. Quietly, plans had already been put in place to assign protective details to all of them, just in case.

Rachel Maddow Explains It All to the Tea Party in Righteous Rant

I've been trying for three days to make a list of all the good things about this election but there are so many it is overwhelming. And then last night Rachel Maddow spoke it all to power (or lack of power) in a righteous rant against the Republicans and the Tea Party that made my jaw drop in admiration. She said it better than I could, or probably anyone ever could. So I'll let her words speak for all of us:

First part of Transcript from MSNBC, Second part from GreyHawk on Daily Kos
Cross-Posted on Snark Amendment

That happened (the re-election of Barack Obama). That really happened.

We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade.

There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.

We're not going to repeal health reform.

Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get health insurance.

We are not going to do that.

We are not going to give a 20% tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid's insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.

We'll not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you're on.

We are not going to redefine rape.

We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.

We are not going to double Guantanamo.

We are not eliminating the department of energy or the department of education or housing at the federal level.

We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.

We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country's new plan is that you should borrow money from their parents.

We are not vetoing the Dream Act.

We are not self-deporting.

We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt.

We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.

We are not going to have, as a President, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help, and there was no apology not ever.

We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolten.

We are not bringing Dick Cheney back.

We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War.

We are not going to do it.

We had the choice to do that if we wanted to do that as a country, and we said no last night, loudly.






Ohio really did go to President Obama last night.
And he really did win.

And he really was born in Hawaii.

And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again.

And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month.

And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.

And the polls were not screwed to oversample Democrats.

And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math.

And climate change is real.

And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes.

And evolution is a thing.

And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us.

And nobody is taking away anyone's guns.

And taxes have not gone up.

And the deficit is dropping, actually.

And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

And the moon landing was real.

And FEMA is not building concentration camps.

And U.N. election observers are not taking over Texas.

And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism.

Listen, last night was a good night for liberals and for Democrats for very obvious reasons, but it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country, we have a two- party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides, both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. and we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea.

That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff.

And the if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems.

Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in realtime, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to is secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center.

You guys, we're counting on you. wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real, knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there.

If the Republican Party and the conservative movement and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. and in that spirit, congratulations.

Epic Win ~ 4 More Years for Obama

I'm almost too happy to blog today, but this has to be said:

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And congratulations to President Obama, the Democratic Party, and every Progressive voter who voted for fairness and sanity in their government - last night we got our country back.

Obama's Last Campaign Speech, Iowa November 5, 2012

Obama gave an inspiring and impassioned speech tonight, and definitely got everyone in the crowd and at home "fired up." What a great man! Good luck tomorrow, Mr. President.

An emotional President Obama at Iowa rally. twitter.com/niccolina/stat…
— Nikki Kahn (@niccolina) November 6, 2012

Sign handed out at final #Obama rally in #Iowa twitter.com/LukeRussert/st…
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) November 6, 2012

The pictures below are screencaps I made from the video.

Vote as if Your Way of Life Depends on it ~ Because it does!

Now. Is. The. Time. So.
VOTE

That is All.

Nate Silver: Obama has 86% Chance of Winning

Obama becoming a heavier favorite, in 538's view. Now 86% to win Electoral College. fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Obama unlikely to win by anything like his post-DNC margins. But Romney has no momentum, Obama's state polling is robust, and time is up.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Headline from 10/29/84: "Mondale upset win predicted": news.google.com/newspapers?id=…

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Good point when considering the Republicans want us to believe that Mitt is going to win in a landslide!

Also the last PEW Poll statistics have come out:

Final Pew Poll: Obama 49 Mitt 42 registered voters. Obama 48 Mitt 45 Likely voters. #p2

— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) November 4, 2012

Pew Poll: Who do you expect to win? Obama 52 Mitt 30. This question is always a strong predictor.

— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) November 4, 2012

Final Pew poll of campaign shows Obama regained much of the ground he lost following the 1st presidential debate pewrsr.ch/Tsny9I

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) November 4, 2012

Adorable Child Crying About "Bronco Bama" and Mitt - We All Understand, Abby!

I think this little child from Colorado speaks for all Americans! And how adorable is it that she calls Obama "Bronco Bamma"? :)

This is the original video of Abigael Evans, posted by her mother.


And NPR has apologized on behalf of all the news reporters who are royally sick of covering the election, too. And as a blogger, I know just how they feel. We wish it was over yesterday.

Via Politico

"On behalf of NPR and all other news outlets, we apologize to Abigael and all the many others who probably feel like her," NPR's Mark Memmott writes. "We must confess, the campaign's gone on long enough for us, too. Let's just keep telling ourselves: 'Only a few more days, only a few more days, only a few more days.'"

All Over but the Shouting for Romney

It's all over but the shouting. Well, except the debates, but I don't think those are going to make much difference. Maybe it's just all over but the crying, recriminations, blame game, and circular firing squad. Well, actually all that has started even in the national media, so we have to look away when it becomes embarrassing. And try not to enjoy it too much, heh . . .

Whatever: the fact remains that many of the Electoral Maps are beginning to look the same as the race tightens up and early voting is beginning in many states. The idea that this is still a "horse-race" between Romney and Obama, or that many states are in the "toss-up" category is probably bogus. I don't rule out voter suppression or election day shenanigans, but Romney almost needs to win every swing state in order to get to 270 electoral votes, and I just don't see how that could happen at this point.

Business Insider quotes Romney saying last week: "I’m very pleased with some polls, less so with other polls, but frankly at this early stage, polls go up, polls go down."

Yep, polls do go up and down, yet many voters are locking in their choices by getting to a voting booth now or sending in their absentee ballots. The election is "happening now," as Wolf Blitzer likes to say.

Business Insider also points out the pitfalls of Romney's almost impossible path to victory because every state they mention is leaning Obama at the present time. If Romney loses one, he basically loses all of them.

Florida is a virtual must-win for Romney. If he loses, he would have to take swing states Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada and Virginia to get past 270. That's an extremely illogical path to victory — especially because two of those states (Ohio and Wisconsin) have moved to the "lean Obama" column on the RCP average.

. . . Without Ohio, Romney has to win Florida, as well as New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Colorado.

. . . if Romney loses [Virginia] he'll have to hang onto Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado as the most plausible path to victory. If Ohio keeps leaning as left as it has been lately, Romney will have to do something implausible — like steal away Michigan or Pennsylvania, two states where Obama has a huge advantage.

. . . If Romney cannot win North Carolina, it's a twofold kick in the gut. First, it would likely mean he's not performing well in other, less-reliable Republican states. Second, he'd have to hold onto Ohio, Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado to get to 270.

. . . Without Colorado, Romney would have to hold onto Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada.

So there it is - even if Romney holds onto Colorado or North Carolina, what are the chances of all those other states going his way? His chances are slim to none. Obama wins. End of story. I'm not taking anything for granted - just look at the maps!

Nate Silver's 538 Blog on New York Times


CNN Election Map


Real Clear Politics Map