Article: Poor Old Joe Lieberman

In the debate between the three Connecticut US Senate candidates, Senator Joe Lieberman accused his rival Ned Lamont of running "one of the most bitter campaigns" ever. It was the first of three debates scheduled before the election. Lamont made national headlines when he beat Lieberman in the democrat primaries last August running largely on an anti-war campaign.

Yesterday, Lieberman successfully kept Lamont from telling the truth--which the back-stabbing Connecticut senator dubs an "attack"--by asking the audience to keep track of the attacks, saying if they exceeded ten Lamont would buy "free pizza and beer for everybody." So Poor Old Joe wants to stop the bitter attacks. They served him well when he and the Republican Party used them against democrats, but it's not so nice to be on the receiving end.

I certainly wish we lived in an environment where bitterness wasn't part of the political process. But Lieberman's generation, specifically his republican buddies, has allowed this disgraceful form of debate to become the status quo, so excuse us for finally punching back.

Perhaps Poor Old Joe has spent too much time sipping Romanee Conti and wolfing down Brie to notice the bitterness toward blue states (the North and West) on cable news, talk radio and in the mouths of politicians lately. Last night, Michael Savage got on the radio, as he does every night for three hours, and called for democrats to be thrown into concentration camps.

Thus Savage is inciting his audience to take unlawful, unconstitutional action, against Americans for their THOUGHTS; their political beliefs! He also called for the public execution of an American he disagreed with, and made a particularly blood thirsty death threat to Mexican Americans. Savage works three hours a day to incite lynch mobs to physical attack northerners and anyone else who doesn't hold his political beliefs, all with the blessing of the FCC. Shouting "fire" in a movie theatre is innocuous compared to compelling people to murder their political enemies.

Yet Poor Old Joe expects sympathy for the bitter verbal attacks he perceives in this political campaign. It's disgraceful that this smug, arrogant, two-faced senator is complaining about words, when sixty mothers will feel bitter for the rest of their lives because their sons died in Iraq--this month alone.

Almost 2,800 US soldiers have died in a war for which Poor Old Joe made several high profile, sonorous, pretentious endorsements. His motive was political ambition fueled by polls that showed Americans were swept up in the drumbeat to war after 9/11. A war built on false evidence and phrases like "mushroom cloud." Does he wonder if anybody feels bitter about that? Can anyone really believe that those boys would rather be in a coffin than underneath America's blue skies? I guess there was always the chance that Iraqis could have acquired the ability to throw rocks across the ocean.

So while the same republicans who are funding Lieberman's campaign try to incite civil war to achieve their political objectives, the Connecticut senator doesn't deserve any sympathy. Poor Old Joe has the blood of 2,800 Americans on his hands. He ought to do the decent thing, leave politics and think long and hard the consequences of his decisions.