Joe Lieberman

And check out who it is:

This week, John's exclusive guests are Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) LIVE from Jerusalem. We'll get their insight on the foiled airline terror plot and President Obama's strategy on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As Benen points out:

Hmm, McCain and Lieberman, talking together about foreign policy and national security. Now that's a balanced pairing.

CNN – The worst rated name in news! Keep this crap up and before long CNN will lose the ratings game to public access.

If this keeps up then we might finally get rid of Lieberman in 2012:

More than 80 percent (81 percent) of Democrats now say they disapprove of the job Lieberman is doing with only 14 percent approving. Among Republicans, 48 percent disapprove of the senator with just 39 approving. And among independents, 61 percent disapprove of Lieberman's antics with just 32 percent approving.

"It all adds up to a 25% approval rating with 67% of his constituents giving him bad marks," the study concludes. "Barack Obama's approval rating with Connecticut Republicans is higher than Lieberman's with the state's Democrats."

This also proves another thing. Lieberman didn’t make his choices on health care reform to reflect his constituents. Instead we now know he did it for himself. This is why we really need a constitutional amendment to allow recalls of all our elected officials. We shall call it “The Lieberman Amendment”.

It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.

-Joe “the faux” Lieberman in 2005.

Funny how he felt that way then and now he is one of the leading voices criticizing our commander in chief.

If this is true then we see another yet a bit more evidence that the Obama administration failed in delivering true health care reform:

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) insists that the White House did not pressure him to get in line behind either a public health insurance option or a Medicare buy-in compromise during the health care debate this year.

"Well, no. I think I got pressure from the president to be for health care reform," Lieberman said when asked by HuffPost about any pressure from the administration to support either the public option or the Medicare buy-in. "I'd have to think about this, but I didn't really have direct input from the White House on this."

He added that Nancy-Ann DeParle, a top administration health care aide, downplayed the public option's significance early in the debate.

I never believe much of what comes out of Lieberman’s mouth, but he is echoing what other senators, namely Russ Feingold and Jim Webb, have said. If this is the case then President Obama owes the people who fought tooth and nail to elect him a serious explanation.

For those who have maintained that Obama never campaigned on a public option, I give you this from his campaign (PDF). It wasn’t called a “public option”, but rather a “public plan” and is mentioned throughout.

Lieberman left town on Friday night before the snow hit and now CSPAN is reporting that he isn’t back yet. The Senate has a big vote coming up in a little over an hour and they need him there for it.

Al Franken has shown the most balls we have seen from Democrats in a long time, and today was no exception. Here is Al shutting up Joe Lieberman, which then enraged McCain:

Of course his friends are Conservatives like American Future Fund, which is airing this new ad in Connecticut.

Can the Democrats stop pretending that Joe Lieberman is their friend now? Seriously?

Earlier today Joe Lieberman said he changed his stance on the Medicare buy-in because liberals like Anthony Weiner liked it. Now Anthony Weiner has responded:

This afternoon The New York Times and other news outlets reported that Senator Lieberman was backing away from his own health care proposal, in part because I liked it.

If this wasn't so sad, it would be amazing. Here you have the most important legislation for millions of Americans' health and welfare, and apparently Senator Lieberman backs away from his own proposal. Why? Because I and a professor at Yale like it.

All I can say charitably is I hope Senator Lieberman looks into his heart and does the right thing. This is not the time for anyone to act for politics, but to do the right thing. Let's be clear, this is an idea Senator Lieberman has proposed, repeatedly. That others embrace it should not be the criteria for leaders to make decisions. It would be tragic if this is what it appears, a decision based on hurting proponents of reform not helping the millions who need affordable health care coverage.

Some may say reformers should never have praised this measure. But that suggests we all agree to live in an Alice in Wonderland world of saying the opposite of what we mean. Now is the time to talk and act on the merits of an issue. Now is the time for leaders to make the right choices, not political calculations.

Joe admits it: (via HuffPo)

[I]n the interview, Mr. Lieberman said that he grew apprehensive when a formal proposal began to take shape. [...]

And he said he was particularly troubled by the overly enthusiastic reaction to the proposal by some liberals, including Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, who champions a fully government-run health care system.

"Congressman Weiner made a comment that Medicare-buy in is better than a public option, it's the beginning of a road to single-payer," Mr. Lieberman said. "Jacob Hacker, who's a Yale professor who is actually the man who created the public option, said, 'This is a dream. This is better than a public option. This is a giant step.'"

So because Joe doesn’t like Liberals he decided to hurt the well being of millions of Americans? At least terrorists like Osama have the balls to admit their evil plots.

Was this any shock?

One day after he single-handedly killed off a provision to expand Medicare, Sen. Joseph Lieberman is still not promising to support the Democratic health reform bill -- though he told reporters Tuesday that he is getting closer.

I hope the progressives out there who keep saying “well this is better than nothing” takes note. The bill gets watered down more and more everyday and in a big part because of people like Lieberman. Keep this up and I think we will see a lot of Democrats stay home on 11/2/10, and that could even carry over to 2012.

I mean look at this news:

Sen. Joe Lieberman Says He'll Back Republicans in 2010 Congressional Races

Now I’m sure that the Democrats will instantly hold a meeting today and kick Lieberman out of the caucus. As matter of fact I am so abso-fuckin-lutley sure of it that I am going to turn off the news and computer, head on out to the pumpkin patch and wait for the Great Pumpkin to appear and tell me about it.

When news broke yesterday that Lieberman would back a Republican filibuster against health care my instant reaction was “so”. As I continued seeing the blogs go haywire over the news my reaction changed a bit, from “so” to “so what”.

Did anyone really expect Joe Lieberman, the man who was side by side on the campaign trail with John McCain, to support this legislation? If they did then they must have been asleep the last 4 years.

People think Lieberman is unpredictable, but to the contrary that’s exactly what he is – very predictable. Everything Joe does is about Joe. He hasn’t had his name in the news for awhile, so he was suffering from AWDD (Attention Whore Deficit Disorder). To overcome that Joe had to rush out and make news. “Oh I will filibuster health care, but I really don’t want to”. Whaaaa.

The best way to deal with Lieberman is to not deal with him. He’s like a stray dog. Once you feed him he will keep coming back. The food of choice for Joe? Attention.

Everyone please just ignore Joe. He is not worth our energy. By expressing all this outrage towards his much predictable announcement yesterday, you are doing nothing but feeding the beast.

Vendettas and ‘gotcha’ is the politics of old. It’s synonymous with the old attack ads, and something the American people have started rejected, rather strongly. Barack Obama campaigned on change. In two weeks since becoming our President elect, Obama has:

Embraced his one time rival Hillary Clinton, offering her a top position in his administration

Welcomed his recent rival, John McCain, to sit down and discuss how to move forward and put country first.

Dismissed any calls of Joe Lieberman being punished for campaigning against him.

The last issue is the biggie, causing so much outrage throughout the blogosphere right now. Obama said he was going to give us change, and he has. I wish some in the blogosphere would learn to accept that, instead of acting like the person who just murdered a family member was acquitted.

And if they have trouble listening to me, then listen to what Bob Cesca has to say on it – hitting on another point:

With Begich's victory, the Democratic caucus has grown to 58. With Franken and Martin, we could hit 60. Filibuster proof -- at least on paper. But imagine if the Democrats had voted to ejector-seat Lieberman from his chairmanship, and he had stormed off to the Republicans, as he had threatened.

The Begich win would've been nullified in terms of the caucus head-count. One step back to 57. Even if Martin and Franken both win, we would've been stuck at 59.

Yup, pushing Joe out of the caucus would have nullified the Begich win and we would have no path to 60. At least we still have hope, albeit a smaller hope.

I can’t stand Joe Lieberman, and I intend to watch his every move like a hawk from here on out, but there is a simple fact to remember. Joe votes with the Democrats more than the Majority Leader does. That’s something we can’t ignore. Obama has a very progressive domestic issue and we need every vote we can get. Let’s not cut off our noses to spite our face.

Joe Lieberman won more than just the vote to stay in the caucus and keep his chairmanship today. He is now the focus of attention of all the blogs on this side of the blogosphere. For an attention whore like Lieberman, that is orgasmic. People need to just forget about Joe and move on. We have so much other stuff to worry about and 2012 will be here before we know it. Then we can focus on stripping Lieberman of not only his chairmanship, but also his title as Senator. That will be sweet justice.

And for those blaming Obama, like I said in the past that is all he could do short of not saying anything at all (which would have probably been better). If Obama said “Joe must go” and then the Senate decided to keep him anyways, ala the good ole’ boys club, then President Obama would have had a hell of a time getting anything through Lieberman’s committees.

Plus lets also look ahead only two years. That’s when the next session of Congress will convene. Joe will surely be on his best behavior between now and then, and if he isn’t then he could end up gone – especially if we end up with a more solid majority, breaking that 60 seat threshold.

Just now breaking on MSNBC that the Democrats have voted to keep Lieberman in place.