Senator Fudd, majority leader of the US Senate, reported yesterday that he is "bery, bery angry" with Joe Lierberman.

"That'll show him," Senator Fudd added.

It's one thing, folks, to reach across the aisle to someone who has a political philosophy different than yours and who has made his or her opposition to you clear.

It's another thing entirely to succor traitors in your midst.

If there are no consequences for Joe Lieberman--and all that has to be done here is for him to be removed from his positions of power--power that depends on other Democrats (the ones he opposed, remember?) having won--then the signal will be clear: the "Democratic Party" as such simply doesn't exist.

Personally, of course, I'd like to see him horsewhipped on the Mall, tarred and feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. But I am well known for my moderate views.

Look: the GOP is political theatre. They have been since 1980.

Conservatism had some good ideas, and many bad ones, before Reagan. Reagan either pretended to believe them, or did believe them; it doesn't much matter, since he wasn't running the country. The people who were clearly didn't believe those ideas--they didn't try to overturn women's rights, they didn't try to shrink the government, they cut taxes, but they borrowed instead, seeing one of the biggest transfers of wealth--at least until 2000--that the country had ever seen.

Gingrich promoted the "Contract with America," and then conveniently forgot about it. More political theatre, like the blowjob follies of the late 90s. Limbaugh ran his clown act through the 90s and the Naughts; think the Viagra and Oxycontin addict ever bought a single word of it?

It's been theatre, guys, a show for the small people, and it's been eminently successful. Don't write them off yet. They lost control of the show in the last couple of years--in some ways, possibly, deliberately--who wants to pay the price of the ticket now? Let the suckers, i.e., the Democrats, take the heat for the next four to eight years, while they groom a new clown for the lead.

The question is not what ideas the people who run the GOP have; the questions is, can they figure out how to sell a set of ideas to Americans?

Past performance suggests that they've just had a momentary blip in performance.

I'm thinkin' that Vic will somehow end up in the Federal Task Force, rewarded as a hero and moving on to a higher level of corruption.

"the Second City urban inferiority complex"

I grant you that the term "Second City," fairly soon after it was coined, came to refer to Chicago's status in the nation vis a vis New York City.

But originally it meant the "Second City" that followed the first, after the Chicago Fire--the second city built on the ashes of the first. It was a term of pride, not a term of inferiority.

Just for the record.

What it comes down to for the GOP and conservatism:

Purity.

If you're not pure, you're out.

"The whole world is mad, save for thee and me....and I have my doubts about thee."

FOR BLEEDING CHRIST'S SAKE.

The man endorsed the other side's candidate for president.

He is a traitor to his party.

He should be hunted down and (metaphorically) destroyed.

We're not going to make 60 anyway.

Anybody remember the opening scene from "Branded"? That's what should be done to Lieberman.

Defenestrate his cowardly, Republican ass.

It's also called "accountability."

What'll happen the next time a conservative Democrat decides not just to vote against the party, but to actually *disown* the party's Presidential candidate?

Nothing? Then expect to see a rush to do just that, if the candidate looks at all questionable.

Remember what Hillary said: "He's unelectable, Jim." (ST:OS shout-out there). Lieberman probably convinced himself that America would never elect a black man. If he'd just shut up, that would have been okay--but coming out for the Repbulican presidential candidate?

If this doesn't qualify for punishment, what in hell does?

And you don't punish Lieberman to teach Lieberman; you punish Lieberman to teach others who might be tempted. D'oh!

There must be accountability for this, or there is no Democratic Party. Pure and simple.

Can anyone imagine Johnson--or, hell, Bill Clinton?--allowing this to pass? They knew better.

"In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others."

1) Ben Stein knows about as much about economics as he does about evolution and evolutionary theory.

2) What is Schiff saying *now*????

The whole point of 2008 was that when your party embraces the cross, it can't back away. When people have serious issues--like their pocketbook (without the draft, the war has never been a serious issue)--then the vast majority of them don't give a damn about God, or the presumptive lack of Him in a given party.

Lining up behind abortion or guns or Christianity is the sign of a polity that has more money than good sense, and doesn't need to really worry about pocketbook issues.

Those days are over, at least for the forseeable future. We have huge debt, both consumer and governmental, we have abandoned a tradition of innovation, and, if somebody builds a new plant, it gets built in China. The pocketbooks of most Americans have become flat, and there's nothing on the horizon that will fill them again. We can't afford God in our elections anymore.

Finally, the presence of the oogedy-boogedy right-wing doesn't show that God makes mistakes; it shows that we live in a world after the Fall.