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Senator Unprincipled Opportunist (I. Conn) outdid himself on Fox News, and of course, with Chris Wallace, there was no one to challenge the lies.
Remember, this is the same Senator Unprincipled Opportunist who previously told us we should not do health reform now, that we should put it off until the economy fully recovers. Now he tells us we have to do health care reform now to reduce health care costs and because we have millions of people uninsurerd. Apparently, that uninsured problem just happened.
Then Senator Unprincipled Opportunist claims that his biggest concern is the growing national debt. That’s why, he continues, if there is a public option in the reform bill that CBO has repeatedly said would save money and lower the annual deficits, and would save even more if it were strengthened, he would never allow his colleagues to vote for it, thus killing a bill that pays for itself and that he says is essential to reduce health care costs.
And Chris Wallace never blinked an eye.
55 Comments
Short Ride says:
Presumes fact not in evidence as there is no indication that he actually has a conscience.
Edit: and in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
“He” will not allow….. who the hell does this man think he is. I am trying to be calm but my resistance is low after yesterday. HoJo is probably the most amoral human on the planet.
Exactly my thought! That, along with he will never allow his colleagues to vote for it. The man is a total megalomaniac. Ick. Just…ick.
Seriously, something is wrong with Lieberman. Some people are Wingnuts and some are Tree Huggers, but this guy is not on point on any two things consecutively. He should lose his chairmanship for mental decompensation. Sarah Palin…Hell, Joe Lieberman was a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
You notice this asshole is still getting the Mic, and being treated like a respectful member of the Seanate.
The fact He worked so hard for McCain should have been disgusting to both parties. yet the Republicans love Him, and the Democrats would sell their souls to keep Him in their caucus.
In many cultures people on both sides would be stoning a man like this, but in ours He is still treated like a great legislator.
If the Democrats don’t strip Him of His powerful commitee chair, and treat Him like a pariah, they have no respect from me.
Could someone way smarter than me (easy) please give me/us a snarkless (not so easy) explanation of why this hasn’t happened?
‘He’s with us on everything but the war.’
If JoeL is so damned concerned about the national debt, he can come out against BushCheney’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are pretty much a balck hole for spending, and I have yet to hear him admit that they’re costing us more every year than healthcare reform will cost in the next three or four.
He’s a GOoPer with the wrong party tag, and worse than the Blue Dogs in some ways: he’s popular with the Talking Heads.
The truth is neither party is concerned about the national debt and of course it’s the last thing on the minds of progressives. Still, it is there and getting bigger by the moment. Wars, half baked social programs…it all adds up. And ultimately it all comes due.
Recent history has shown that the rethugs are much more apt to spend and put it on the card. Democrats have been trying to come up with ways of paying for things.
You apparently don’t read any of the economics stuff we do here.
That’s nonsense tinman. It never comes due in the way you’re implying. See here and here.
Sure.
One reason is the reason the party “reaches out” to Republicans and caters to Blue Dogs. It enables them to spay every last principle they were voted in to implement, under the pretext that they need the votes. Lieberman is the 60th, though you can be sure that if he were the 61st they’d say they need him to backstop Ben Nelson or another renegade. It’s the perfect ploy. Emanuel has it down to an art, along with many other tricks shared with Reid, Schumer, and all the others in the politburo.
Another reason is that while he seems slimy and traitorous to us, he is just an extreme case of slime, the king of the slugs if you will. He gets lots of donations. He beat a challenger within the party itself. His party includes his name. What senator wouldn’t admire, indeed, envy him for this achievement? He’s outdone them.
Finally, there’s the fear factor. In our decrepit political culture this snake in the grass actually can hold himself out as a man of conscience. We here know this is false, that he’s a back-stabbing son of a bitch. Just look at what he did to Clinton, then to his own running mate in 2000, drooling over Cheney, then helping Bush during the Florida recount by asking for the military votes but not those of Americans voting from Israel — yes, Israel. But this is what they all do, or would like to. He gets away with it. It’s astonishing to me, however much I try to figure it out, that he went for and actually has the back of the Christian right. You don’t need a treatise in metaphysics to know how bizarre this is. But that makes him scary. He could, it seems, turn on the Democratic Party. Even Gore recently called him his friend. Yeah, right.
I hope this helps a bit. I kept the snark quotient down as best I could.
Well ick. And thanks!
It seems to me that making an example of the most egregious slitherer is surely called for. He must smirk himself to sleep each and every night.
If all you say is true (and I believe you), then we are being held hostage by this
little creep and self-servingSenator.Okay. I’m snarking. Time to go to Mayo for an attitude transplant.
They believe the Senate is great club, and that any member should be treated with respect. Yes they still think He is a good man and can be broughten around to vote with them in the end.
Fools tend to do foolishish things, and seldom stop being fools.
Michael Moore has a piece out today on:
STUPAK
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest-news/house-backs-anti-abortion-amendment
First Rule of THE FAMILY Is Don not Mention THE FAMILY.
Stupak lives in D.C. home of mysterious organization of theocrats
VERY interesting
bbl going for Bazs eyedrops,
And the Democrats love him.
I want a second political party please.
In his defense, it’s hard to ‘blink an eye’ with arab goggles from his conservative guests firmly in place.
What is it with these self-styled religious politicians and their slippery relationship with objective truth?
Are they not concerned that their deity will judge them as prevaricators and bearers of false witness, or is it all just a cynical sham to cadge votes from the easily gulled faithful and tonguebathe moral relativists of a like mind?
Bah, too early in the morning for vexing rhetorical questions.
;>)
They think they can buy their way out of that situation.
Their ‘god’ tells them so.
Their ‘god’ is not who they think.
Perhaps they can, in a temporal sense. Obviously, with such organizations as Stupak and Ensign’s ‘family’, the operative wisdom is to deceive outsiders regarding the facts at any cost, purportedly in the service of a higher cause.
However, the obscure working documents used as the alleged basis for such actions appear at odds with such behavior, and are far more in line with those sneering criminals who would make up their own reality and force us to judiciously study it…
Therefore, I cannot take their claims to walking the narrow path seriously, and will continue to treat them as the opportunistic grifters and dupes for Mammon that they are.
;>)
that disgusting pustule ,pus bag must be destroyed (politically….
NEXT
my poor dog Baz,who has the seizures,now contracted glaucoma,the medicine is 102 dollars for a few drops
in CANADA its 3 bottles for 53.00
im about to blow a SPARKPLUG ARGH@#$@#$%#@$%^#$%!!!!!!!
Am I understanding you correctly? You are complaining about the high cost of medicine for your dog?
Jeepers!
Scotty, beam me up!
go PREJEAN yourself!!!!
time for a NEW JOE FLOAT
him and his PHARMA_WHORE wife
with millions of dollars attached to their hands and BIG LEATHER satchels full at their feet
LETS DO IT!!!
Screw the national debt! We need healthcare in the US & more stimulus to create jobs. No more wars & taxcuts for the rich!
“Screw the national debt!”
That sums up the progressive credo very nicely doesn’t it?
You apparently don’t remember Econ 101. Deficits matter. It’s a question of timing. Republicans could have run surpluses for a decade. If they had, it would have been much easier and cheaper to deal with the economic crisis they provoked with their corrupt administration of the regulatory system.
i completely disagree with this statement.
econ 101 (micro) does not tell the macro story.
last Joe Float
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/106/273378056_7586b54e4f.jpg
i have the truck,paint chickenwire,and talent…lets make anew float to follow SHORTRIDES LIMO around
EVERYWHERE!!
the fed deficit is a neoliberal red herring.
so long as we run a current account deficit (and we must so long as the dollar is global reserve currency unless we want to increase global deflationary pressure) we MUST run a fed deficit unless we want the private sector to increase debt or gdp to drop.
clinton’s balanced budget / surplus was one of the most stupid economic policies of the century.
if we’re ever going to have a progressive economic plan, we’re going to have to purge our minds of false neoliberal assumptions.
clinton’s balanced budget / surplus was one of the most stupid economic policies of the century.
———————–
i concur…the repuke cabal,and Bush family were creaming their pants when they saw all that moolah,and decided to steal it by HOOK AND CROOK…they stole that and then some
not just that – it’s probably counter intuitive if you’ve been listening to neoliberal economists, but with fed balanced budget and even surplus, economic growth then depended on private sector debt increase and to achieve that they engaged in massive financial deregulation and bubble economy. instead of investing in and growing the real economy, which would have required fed deficit financing.
look at the correlations of depressions following surplus fed budget in our history.
i hate neoliberal economics.
i think their ideas are completely convoluted AND SELF-serving…gotta go toodlles,later
more from godley and wray in their paper, “Is Goldilocks Doomed?“:
I disagree about Clinton’s balanced budget. I don’t have a problem with getting ahead now and then. Wasting that money, however, was a crime.
dollars are not a store of national wealth. that is another neoliberal fallacy,
Hi:
Correct me if I’m wrong but current account balance has nothing to do with the fact that countries use the dollar to denominate their reserves. The current account balance is just a net measure of dollars flowing out of the US economy vs dollars flowing in from abroad.
Also is your implication that deficit government spending (public tax dollars) is to be maintained to spur the economy perpetually? During good times and bad?
This would imply that these dollars would be continually invested to the point of deficits in private enterprises as well as in public works. If that’s the case then how does the governmet recoup its investment in private firms, and which firms? Also what is private capital supposed to be doing all this time.
I can see the need for government to spend to the point of deficit when there is no other source of capital to spur demand, but this is a necessity it is not a good in itself.
Correct. Deficit spending will catch up with you if you do it consistently. Sorry Dick Cheney.
Of courese progressives have never given a hang about paying for things so deficits sure don’t matter to them.
hi gamd521,
that is correct. but because there is a desire to save dollar or dollar denominated financial assets, we have to provide the dollars, via our current account deficit, to compensate for the desire to save (plus some to allow for growth). if we don’t that it will put deflationary pressure on the global economy and that would be a bad thing.
our fed gov spending is not financed by taxes and does not have to be financed by borrowing (unlike state and local gov spending and private sector spending). there are constraints on fed spending, but they are not taxes or borrowing. i know this sounds extremely weird, and it did to me too. but that’s only because we are still thinking of money though it was still convertible to gold. modern money doesn’t work like that. while ideally our fed gov would always run a deficit, it does matter very much what we spend our fed budget on and also the magnitude of the deficit (which should be targeted for full employment without inflation).
if you want a fun intro to modern money like ours, i highly recommend warren mosler’s, 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds. there are some amusing stories involving larry summers and al gore too. an easy and fun read on an important and usually conceptually difficult topic.
hope you like it and i look forward to discussing it with you — i think it will blow your mind (in a good way).
I’m studying for my Critical Care boards tonight but I will read your assigned reading tomorrow and get back.
I do realize that governments when they choose to carry out loans or borrowing can for the sake of convenience (and historical confidence and US advantage) carry these out in denominated dollars for accounting purposes. They have to use some standard but this is arbitrary a different standard for bookeeping purposes would do just as well.
But when US government budgetary obligations are involved such as NIH funding or bailing out a Bank then a transfer of real tax based dollars are involved, although I suppose again they could for the purposes of accounting have these transactions appear as shifts in the government’s balance sheets.
I’m not sure though that we can escape the fact that ultimately income taxed derived dollars are being transferred to meet all government obligations.
Thanks
good luck with your boards!
this other stuff is not so important, but if you ever do get around to reading mosler’s essay, i’d love to discuss it further with you. if you have some accounting knowledge it may come easier to you than it has to me and the more people working through these heterodox (non-neoliberal) economic ideas the better, especially if we can help each other. i’m convinced we can’t propose progressive economic policiies so long as we’re stuck in neoliberal economic thinking.
p.s. i saw that you had asked me some other questions previously that i never answered (and maybe more that i didn’t see?). it’s frustrating sometimes when the comments close for a thread before we’re done, anyway, my apologies and please feel free to challenge/question me again about anything i’ve written. especially if you think i’m wrong, i very much appreciate corrections.
I believe that the 2012 campaign should start now to get rid of this toad. What I would like to see happen is an armored vehicle purchased and painted with signage identifying it as american health insurance and pharma industry. Then plaster it with thank you signage to Joe expressing appreciation for all his support etc. Have this vehicle at every event from now until election 2012.
He’s repeating pretty much the same BS I heard last week that was debunked even before that appearance. WTF! For me, this would be reason enough to remove him from his committee chairmanship. How could anyone not see him for the a-hole he is?
If we each write a “stern” letter to our Democratic Senators demanding that Joe be removed from his committee – or chairmanship – it just might do some good. It couldn’t hurt.
Lieberman’s goal seems to be to make sure that no one comes to his funeral except family. His Republican friends will forget him in the snap of a finger, and all Democrats hate him.
Someone should start a “I Will Boycott Lieberman’s Funeral — God Forbid That Anything Happens to Him” signup sheet.
I’d be surprised if all of his family showed up. By then his kid[s] might not want to be associated with him either.
Lieberman, funeral of one.
Oh hell, let him kill it. There isn’t a real public option in it, anyway. This is just an insurance company enrichment act. I hope the whole thing dies in the Senate and we get to start over again with single-payer, like we need to.
THIS GUY COULD HAVE BEEN VICE PRESIDENT.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Same disease that catapulted into notoriety the egos of other demented public figures like Bill Kristol and Dick Cheney. They all think the world revolves around them, so it must get ugly should they ever end up in the same room together.
This guy is sickening! Joe has GOT TO GO!
The Democrats MUST strip him of his chairmanship.
Instead of deficit spending, why not sell Government stock giving people a safe insured place to invest there money. This would provide needed capitol the same way is does for businesses that sell their stock. Investing in our country and it’s future would be way smarter than investing in Corporate money making schemes. We pay enough taxes that the dividends needed to be paid should not be a problem.
You see this would require our Government to act more like a business. They also in turn could loan this money out, providing the capitol that the banks seem unwilling to do. The interest would come back to the Government providing more money to work with.
We listen to the Republicans with their smaller Government bull shit, but a bigger smarter Government would be much more preferable that a much bigger Wall Street. We have fallen for the bull, and think we have to let Wall Street run the world. When in truth we would be better off if it had competition, and it was not the only game for investment in town.
Well you actually can do this. You can buy Treasury bills from the government and the governmrnt pays you back your investment with interest.
The bad news is that currently the rate of return is near 0%. And the T-bills mature in around 5 years or so. In fact at the height of the Bank meltdown many private investors placed their money in Treasury bills even as it payed out such low interest rates. The reason being that T-bills are very safe.
I know about the T bills but that is just like Government wanting Your money for nothing.
I said stock where they had to pay a decent dividend of say a minimum of 6 to 10 percent, and if the economy turned around and the deficits and debt were under control the rate would go up accordingly.
You see the cheap bastards in Government, as long as they can get cheap money have no respect for what it really costs. Between the T bills and the foreign money they have been feeding the pig with cheap dollars.
This leaves the American people which are the tax payers forced, if wanting to make anything on their money into the markets. We all know how risky that is.
It would be far more favorable to buy federally insured stock in the Government, and and have the full weight of the American tax payers guarantee our money, instead of Chinese money.
The government needs money to work with, the people need safe investments, and the country needs money being lent to cure our problems. I haven’t heard one person come up with a better idea. Like I say we are stuck on the stock market and Wall Street because we bought the bull they sold us. It’s time to make a change to solve our problems, not keep doing the same things that caused them.
I prefer to call him Senator Palpatine. He has the same hair! But Sen. Unprincipled Opportunist is much clearer for everyone.
Lieberman is taking his stance for the public exposure. The reality is that the public option isn’t even a new idea, it’s already working for over a million people in Ohio. Wake up, Joe! http://cli.gs/23yYaM/