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Joe Lieberman – gee thanks, Connecticut

Joe Lieberman – gee thanks, Connecticut

There are some Senators who drive me nuts, but nobody more so than Joe Lieberman. Some years ago, I used to have a modicum of respect for the guy as a moderate. Now he’s a snake. At least my more-red-than-red Senators here in Georgia, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, are predicable in their unthinking Bush loyalist stance. They can always be relied upon to vote exactly the way I don’t want them to vote.

Oh sure, Joe, let’s go into Iran now. And to think that you ran on a platform for bipartisan cooperation to end the war. You’ve lost all credibility with me. That’s it.

I can see why people in Connecticut are finally waking up and regreting re-electing Holy Joe.

David Sirota has a great blog post on Lieberman’s strategery

During the campaign, we did all that we could to point out how Lieberman was lying about his position on the war through as many venues as possible – blogs, candidate speeches, and television advertising making the point that “a vote for Lieberman means a vote for more war” (an ad that Lieberman actually held a special press conference to attack for supposedly being not true). But in the general election’s stretch run, the independent validators in the race – the local and national media – refused to report on Lieberman’s actual positions and votes continuing to support Bush and the war, and this key slice of Democratic and Independent voters remained confused. They voted for Lieberman because they believed that he perhaps had been pro-war before, but had changed – when in fact the only thing that had changed temporarily was his language, but not his actions.

Had Connecticut voters had more information about exactly how Lieberman’s campaign to reinvent himself as an antiwar leader was a complete sham, that key segment of the Democratic and Independent voters might not have been confused, and the election – as the poll now confirms – would have gone the other way.

Meanwhile, some important voices within Lieberman’s own ingroup are calling for him to resign or to be “recalled”.

The chairman of Joseph Lieberman’s minor political party has asked state officials to determine whether the U.S. senator founded it last year under false pretenses and broke election laws.

“I think he took unfair advantage of his many years of incumbency,” said John Orman, a Fairfield University political science professor who took over the party Lieberman formed after losing last year’s Democratic primary to Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont. “He decided to run as a minor party candidate without actually joining that party, knowing there would be protection from the various officials in Hartford he’s been friends with for 30 years or so.”

… More recently, Connecticut for Lieberman asked the senator to resign from office for advocating a military strike against Iran. Orman said Connecticut for Lieberman was the only political party willing to hold the senator accountable.

Halliburton and KBR in the News

Halliburton and KBR in the News

Halliburton and KBR have broken up – and breaking up is hard to do. But no sad faces, y’hear? Everything’s A-OK for the billionaire war and oil profit set.

They are diggin’ the new headquarters in Dubai – way better than Houston. Texas is so over. Everything’s bigger in the United Arab Emirates.

Halliburton’s second quarter profits more than doubled.

Halliburton Co.’s profit more than doubled in the second quarter, getting a $933-million lift from the separation of former subsidiary KBR Inc. But even without that gain, the results still beat the consensus Wall Street forecasts for the oilfield services contractor. Its shares rose 4 percent. Earnings were $1.5 billion for the April-to-June period, which amounted to $1.62 per share, compared with income of $591 million, or 55 cents a share, in the year-ago period, Halliburton said yesterday. Revenue in the quarter rose 20 percent, to $3.7 billion from $3.1 billion a year ago.

Despite various scandals, the war profiteering and corruption continue. It’s such a great feeling to know that we support such great causes with our tax dollars – we are so lucky that they get all those no-bid contracts…

And what a relief! A federal judge has decided that whistleblowers may not sue U.S. companies for fraud if payment for services was made in Iraqi (not U.S.) money. That’s going to save a LOT of aggravation.

Oh, yeah, and good ole’ Dick Cheney is still drawing one and a half million dollars a year from Halliburton for his excellent work – no conflict of interest there, nope. Nope.

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Rove’s Fake Democrat Robocalls

Rove’s Fake Democrat Robocalls

Rove has set up fake-Democrat robocalls, according to Democrats.com. It seems to have been going on for at least two weeks. Report this if it happens to to you!

More details and ongoing coverage at:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com
http://dailykos.com (mostly November 5th)

Karl Rove has been bragging for weeks about his “72-hour program” to swing the elections, which predict a Democratic takeover of Congress.

Now we know what it is: a dirty trick campaign using robocalls.

The calls are made to Democrats and swing voters at all times of day or night to make them angry. And they pretend to be from the Democrat (“Hello, I’m calling with information about Lois Murphy”). If you hang up, they call back 7-8 times, and each time you hear the Democrat’s name, to get you angry at him or her. If you stay on, you get to hear a scathing attack on the Democrat.

I’m getting robocalls from everyone, but I haven’t gotten a repeat call. My hubby got a push-poll today from a live person. But so far everything ends at 8-9 PM.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points memo:

Both parties deliver millions of robocalls during election season. You’ve probably gotten the calls from both parties and many outside groups. It happens every cycle.

Only one party has a nationwide campaign to deliver millions of intentionally-harassing calls disguised to appear that they’re from the opposite party. That party is the Republican party. And the calls are funded by the NRCC — the House GOP election committee.

It’s the party of election subversion. Deal with it.

Changes to Bill Inserted by Staffer?

Changes to Bill Inserted by Staffer?

When I first saw the headline “Midnight Rider Terminates Iraq Reconstruction Watchdog,” I had no idea what it meant. Sheesh. The things that make you click.

Midnight Rider? On a horse, a motorcycle? Does he have wings? A cape?
Terminates? Kills, you mean? Or is this something to do with robots?
Iraq Reconstruction Watchdog? What breed is that? Is it allowed in the green zone?

See what I mean? I had to click just to see what it was. (Did you wonder about my headline at all? heh-heh)

What I found was a must-read by Daniel Schulman from the MoJo (Mother Jones) blog. Even with everything that I’ve seen in the last couple of years, this just kicks my tits (you should excuse the expression).

Midnight Rider Terminates Iraq Reconstruction Watchdog

Secreted into a military authorization bill that was signed by the president two weeks ago is a provision that will shutter the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction effective October 1, 2007. The office, headed by former White House official Stuart W. Bowen Jr., was established in October 2004 to investigate the potential fraud and abuse of reconstruction funds. Since then it has filed one explosive report after another, revealing, most recently, that the military could not account for hundreds of thousands of weapons it provided to Iraqi security forces. Perhaps Bowen’s agency did its job a little too well.

The New York Times reports:

“Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into what is called the conference report, which reconciles differences between House and Senate versions of a bill.

Neither the House nor the Senate version contained such a termination clause before the conference, all involved agree.

‘It’s truly a mystery to me,’ Ms. Collins said.

It’s no longer a mystery. According to the Times, the provision was placed in the bill by Congressional staffers working for Duncan Hunter, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (who recently announced he’s running for president in 2008).

“I just can’t see how one can look at this change without believing it’s political,” Rep. Henry Waxman told the Times.

Doesn’t anyone read anything over there before they give it to the President for a signature? Who is actually in charge of this “reconciliation” document when there are differences, as I’m assuming there usually are, between Senate and House versions of a bill?

Way to shut down oversight. One office is actually doing its job, so they’re shutting it down. Secretly.

Sneaky and despicable.

By their words

By their words

“Not that I have anything against lawyers. Looking around the room, I’d guess that a year ago, about half of you were down in Florida.”
Dick Cheney, Nov 2001, to The Federalist Society

“You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”
George W. Bush, speech at a Washington dinner, 3/2001

“I am the federal government. I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am the Constitution.”
Tom DeLay responding to a government employee who tried to prevent him from smoking on government property, 1995

“I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”
George W. Bush

“Given the outcome of our work in Florida and with a new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country.”
Martin L. Fagan, ChoicePoint Vice-President, speaking of expunging voters from the rolls

“God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”
George W. Bush, to former Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, 6/2003