Some of us think the country has gone sane! For awhile, anyway.

So, yes, let's savor the moment, while it lasts...

...please don't forget about holding Bush accountable for his many crimes: torturing, illegally detaining people who had not been charged with any crimes, starting a war under false pretenses, and repeatedly violating the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights through illegal wiretapping and searches without warrants.

If Bush is allowed to get away with his crimes, it will set a precedent that the president is above the law, and will allow subsequent presidents to do whatever the hell they want.

Of course, Obama doesn't take office until January 20th, so it's fine for us all to just sit back and enjoy his victory for a little while. Once Obama takes office, let's all urge our elected officials to hold Bush accountable so that we never have a repeat of what happened. After all, even if Obama turns out to be the greatest president since FDR, he will only be in office for a maximum of 8 years.

...has passed. An ironic bit of news today: Howard Dean is stepping down from the DNC, to be replaced by an Obama pick. You'd think he would have earned some thanks from Obama and the Democrats for his 50-state strategy, which undoubtedly helped the party enormously; not so. I have to wonder if Howard's old enemy Rahm Emmanuel (Obama's new Chief of Staff and a bitter opponent of the 50-state strategy) played a part in that decision.

At the same time, it is being reported that Obama is pushing Harry Reid and the Democrats to forgive Joe Lieberman and keep him in the caucus. This seems like suicidal madness, because Lieberman's chairmanships give him considerable oversight authority and investigative powers. He never used them against Bush, of course, but there's every reason to expect him to use them constantly against Obama.

Plus, of course, Joe did everything he can to help McCain and hurt the Democrats in the past year. His every waking moment in the campaign was to deliver a giant "f--k you" to the Democratic Party.

What does a guy have to do to be punished by the Democrats? Apparently, the only crime they'll punish is the crime of brilliantly saving their asses. Maybe if Lieberman had come up with the 50-state strategy they would have dumped him from the caucus...

The moment of sanity is over. Back to the status quo.

They painted him as a socialist, a Marxist, a terrorist, and the most liberal member of the Senate. Yet he was elected with a comfortable margin. So what advice does everyone give him? It's a center-right country, don't govern from the left.

Howard Dean promised to serve one term as head of the DNC, and he's keeping that promise. What exactly you're calling for, --Barack Obama begging him to take another term despite that, perhaps? -- is a bit of a mystery.

Regarding Lieberman, what Obama is talking about is Lieberman staying to caucus with the Democrats, and almost no one else in Congress is proposing otherwise. What's being debated is whether to strip him of one or both of his chairmanships, at which point whether to remain a Democrat or not would be up to Lieberman. I tend to think it would force him to switch to Republican, and I hope he does.

Painting all of this as some wild swing back to the center on Obama's part is disingenous to say the least. Nice try. He may well do things that seem too centrist to me but trying to portray these two things that way is just bizarre.

If the dems kick Lieberman out, he will happily be picked up by republicans. Obama no doubt knows this and that's why he is willing to forgive. Let's try and keep as many in our camp as possible. Let's learn from the republicans mistakes. At least Dean isn't leaving the party.

Sarah Palin

- ah, pal

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Sarin!!!

No wonder she was obsessed with who was palling around with who! Thank goodness the American People saw through that!!

What's the point of having a D by Lieberman's name if he doesn't caucus with the Democrats? So we can run numbers, headcount D vs R in the road to a filibuster-proof 60, except the numbers don't mean anything because we can't rely on his vote?

Let him be snapped up by the Republicans; he's already stumping for them! Hell, I'm sure that sort of cynical mercenary opportunism he engenders will work wonders out there in the political wilderness they're doomed to wander - because cynical political opportunism certainly can't be why they're in the doghouse now, right?

Lieberman isn't in our camp. He left in a huff after Connecticut Dems decided to run someone else for "his" Senate seat. He caucused with the Dems for the past couple of years to give them a bare majority in exchange for the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. The Dems need to fill that role with someone more reliable.

Sure, he may actually carry out his threat of going all the way over to the Repubs. [shrug] Maybe better so, really. Repubs will crow about it for a few days and pretend that Dems "kicked him out for daring to disagree with them" or some such garbage. Then they'll ignore him for the next four years. Pundits will stop calling him up, except when they can't get any of the either reliable Israel-firsters to answer the phone.

Lieberman's political worth dropped like a rock on November 4th. Reid's just trying to handle this politely, but Lieberman is evidently still nursing the wounds to his sense of entitlement.

I'm so post-election happy now that even Joe Lieberman still being (somewhat) alive can't bring me down, but really my friends, he's aged so much since ALF went off the air.

Here's a photo of that golden ager when he was younger, and a review of him I wrote in June

www.boskolives.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/on-top-of-hillary-baby-its-cold-up-there

Not much else to add, except I'd be happy to donate to any fund that was set up to buy a wooden stake with his name on it. That's what it's going to take........

Jerry w