Ships That Pass in the Night...

  If Lieberman is a "ship" he has to be a garbage-scow" and, whatever Arlen Spector is, he's a good deal better than a garbage-scow.

   How does Lieberman sell the idea that a health-care reform which actually covers more people for less than the present system's costs is "bad for the economy"?

  How does he convince people that his real concerns are fiscal ones when his votes clearly show that when it comes to allocating expenditures for war and for military hardware and related costs, he recognizes no limit on spending on these?

   Very briefly, the actual Republican party practice of government shows that their operating assumptions are simple:

   " We cannot afford a cheaper health-care system because we must spend every available dollar on war and its military requirements while, at the same time, we continuously cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and cut government programs which aid in many vital ways the neediest Americans.  "

    That is the "logic" at work here, and, by many indications, Americans are either "buying" that or they're not sufficiently opposed to it in order to stop it.

    We really should ask: "How and why could this be?!!?"

   because the answers to that question--- and there are answers to it---are both startling and most revealing.

   In part, the answer contains this aspect:

  Americans hold utterly fantastic notions about "economy" and economics---and not only the most "conservative" among them.  Their fantasy ideas include the widespread belief that the "economy" is an entity apart, something existing "in nature" and, for reasons which are taken to be grounded in "nature", in naturally-occurring processes, in "naturally-based" "economic laws", it is futile, and, because futile, then, "wrong" philosophically and morally, to "intervene" in this supposedly distinct entity, "the economy" by what are held to be government's meddling measures in that realm.

   Though these ideas, which go back to Eighteenth-century conceptions of economic theory, have been thoroughly discredited and exploded for generations now, none of that has yet penetrated to the consciousnesses of Americans---even highly-educated ones!---in more than a minority's proportion.

   Thus, it is gross ignorance of economic theory and practice which accounts, almost alone, for the ability of a person like Senator Lieberman to go on television and say with a straight face sheer nonsense and actually get away with it.

   We are repeatedly told the hackneyed phrase, "Politics is the art of the possible".  But this, in a nation of such widespread ignorance on such fundamental and vital matters, rings like a death-sentence.  It seems to take for granted some sort of immutable reality as constituting "the possible" when, in fact, what is possible is infinitely varied and variable according to the talents and the knowledge that any given people have or fail to have at their disposal.

    If politics is the art of the possible, such a phrase still gets us simply nowhere since what's possible for a room-full of ignorant minors and what's possible for a room-full of informed and aware people, those who possess a rich store of accurate knowledge of their own history, politics and economics, are two different things, worlds apart.

   It simply shouldn't do to be able to say, "politics is the art of the possible" and, with that, close debate as though this settles anything for those who can think beyond the end of their noses.

  An economy exists nowhere in nature prior to and absent some political order which creates the prerequisites for the economy's existence---by design or by default, but one way or another, creates and maintains them.  This most elementary fact in economics is simply not known to or understood by many Americans.  That should be recognized as a scandal and a fatal scandal.

Yesterday, I would have said that Lieberman is merely seeking attention, and will cave on his filibuster threat.  I no longer believe that, after watching his performance on Face the Nation.  He sure seemed to dig his heels in by saying, unequivocally, that he would filibuster a public option, adding that no bill would be better than a bill with a public option.

I suppose he can still back away from that, but his comments left pretty little wiggle room.

It's really hard to understand Liberman's motivation.  I can't believe that his objections to the public option are sincere (even though I believe that there are genuine reasons others might object).  

Is this guy simply evil incarnate?

seems to me the entire purpose of accepting Lieberman into the dem fold is in order to threaten him re: committee chairship at this moment. if he joins the repug filibuster he should lose  it - and then maybe we get our investigation into the Katrina debacle, which iirc he blocked.

Viva Obama

But, if Holy Joe loses his chairmanships, he won't be as useful to AIPAC and the state of Israel. Will the sky fall then?

Whatever you liken him to, Lieberman is a national disgrace.  He is, IMHO, totally without dignity and integrity.  I think his real forte is screwing those who depend upon him.  May he harvest the rich crop of his misdeeds and suffer the obloquy of his nefarious acts.

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. Sir William Drummond

I just wonder what brought such venom on. What made him become so fierce an opponent of the public option, watered down and handcuffed as it is?


Recommended by Hideo Kojima

And this ass hole was almost Vice President, thanks Al Gore.

Blue Tidal Wave

Could this have been Lieberman's plan all along?  To basically end up playing the spoiler for what everyone knew was going to be the signature effort by this administration and becoming the hero in the eyes of the GOP and their base?  Could he have essentially made a deal with his Republican friends to make nice with the Democrats in order to kill health care reform from the inside of the Democratic Party, thereby taking almost all the political air out of the Obama administration's balloon and killing any momentum to get anything else done in the run-up to 2010?

For all of the people who had real misgivings about allowing Lieberman to continue to caucus with the Democrats after doing his best Republican imitation during the 2008 election, could this be the final validation of their greatest fears?

Was it the plan all along to roll the Democrats, cut the legs off the Obama administration and jump ship to the waiting GOP?  Or is that just too much of a tin-foil hat conspiracy?  Running as a Republican in Connecticut does not seem to make for the best chances at continuing employment, but knowing his bridges were basically burned with the Democrats, would he gamble with his chances in the GOP, thinking that the GOP somehow would be significantly revived at the polls after their all-in effort to kill health care has so revved up the base?  Maybe he is banking that his best bet for a political future is as a new-found hero with the GOP's noisy right.  Nothing would make him more admirable and provide greater appeal to his narcissism than to be portrayed as the lone dissenter, standing on the steps of the Capital and almost single handedly fighting off the evils of "government run health care".

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity"