RAHM EMANUEL AND JELLO BIAFRA TELL IT LIKE IT IS ON LIEBERMAN WHILE LANNY DAVIS WRITES FROM SOME BELTWAY CORPORATE WHORE BUBBLE

In the end the Lieberman-Lamont primary race, climaxing in Connecticut right now, is about a faithless incumbent and what control voters have over their government. On paper, it looks like Ned Lamont, a political novice who came out of nowhere, is going to beat a 3 term U.S. senator who ran for Vice President. In the last few weeks of the campaign polls have been consistent in predicting a significant win for Lamont. But sometimes "on paper" doesn't translate to the vagaries of the ballot box. Lieberman is nothing if not the consummate machine pol with his fingers on lots of buttons. He knows how to game the system and he's done it before. By all counts he's hired 4,000 people for today who only "job" is to vote for him. He's won elections in the past with last minute stunts. So we'll have to see. But whether Lieberman manages to squeak by with another term or not, notice has certainly been served on Inside-the-Beltway incumbants, particularly those of the rubber stamp variety, that voters are connecting their dissatisfaction directly to them.

The Insider political class, the bottom feeding careerist pols and consultants and crooks or all stripes have gotten hysterical to the point of insanity, fearful they might have to get real jobs and actually work for a living someday and have rallied around Lieberman-- just as more and more Connecticut Democrats, examining his actual record for the first time, have become disenchanted. The most extreme right fringe of the mainstream media, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page is always happy to lend space to fractious party-hurting Democrats, especially of the right-of-center variety. Look at today's psychotic screed by Democratic corporate whore Lanny Davis. Channeling pure McCarthyism, he accuses Americans who challenge Bush's policies and the incumbents who rubber stamp them of... McCarthyism.

You probably have come to realize I'm no fan of Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the DCCC. Still I was impressed with his clear-eyed analysis of why Connecticut voters have turned against Lieberman. "What's playing out here is that being a rubber stamp for George Bush is politically dangerous to life-threatening." Lanny Davis and other corporate shills on the Washington gravy train may call it McCarthyism, but Rahm-of-the-Beltway is calling it exactly right. (This is the guy who, as a Bush frat brother, was branded with a burning cigarette by GWB himself when he pledged DKE, although Bush made it up to him more recently by appointing him to a fraudulent presidential "privacy" board where he sits with professional slimebucket Ted Olson of the Arkansas Project.) Steve Gilliard addresses Davis' slanders head-on.

For most voters, it certainly started with an awareness of Lieberman's more than rubber stamp attitude on the war and occupation of Iraq. For some it never went beyond that. For others, that realization opened them to understanding a pattern that shows a Democrat duplicitously acting to further a Republican and Big Business agenda to the detriment of Democrats and to the detriment of his constituents.

My own first interaction with Lieberman came not because of war but because of his fake moralistic attack on the music business in alliance with Lynne Cheney, Bill Bennett, Tipper Gore and other censorious holier-tha-thou Constitution shredders. At the time two of Lieberman's favorite targets were an artist I worked with, Ice-T, and a very old friend, Jello Biafra. A few months ago Biafra wrote me a note about Lieberman. It certainly isn't as McCarthylike as Lanny Davis' Wall Street Journal piece is today and I figured I'd share it with you. Biafra entitled it Jello Biafra vs. the Combover Wolverine.

Joseph Lieberman cost Al Gore the 2000 "election" 100 times more than Ralph Nader. Legendary in Connecticut for his corruption, his right-wing bile is so extreme he makes many congressional Republicans look like lefties. The Democrats’ Jesse Helms-- his attacks on culture and freedom of expression were so far right, it allowed George Dubya himself to outflank Gore on the left.

This is the buffoon who blames high school shootings on Marilyn Manson, and told black voters in Detroit, "The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but not freedom from religion."

He is a backdoor supporter of the arguable anti-Semitic Jews for Jesus. Lieberman said on the 700 Club, "(This) is the beginning of another spiritual awakening in America. I think (Pat Robertson has) really been at the heart of it-– in which people return to their religions as a way to build a kind of wall of principle around morality that was being advocated by the entertainment media.  I don’t think America suffers from… too much [religion in public life], we suffer from too little of it."

To further that agenda Lieberman has repeatedly tried to ram through Congress the Media Marketing Accountability Act. This is a sort of Patriot Act to terrorize free speech. MaMaa would create a federally enforced one-size-fits-all ratings system to restrict music, movies, DVDs and games. Any product without a Lieberman rating would automatically become ILLEGAL! Anyone whose art was found nastier than it's rating (by who? Lieberman? the FBI?) would automatically be fined $11,000 PER UNIT PER DAY!

When the 2000 Florida vote proved deadlocked and rigged, where did Joe run, but to the Bush side! Lieberman turned his back on Al Gore, the man who chose him as a running mate and joined Dubya and dirty tricks master James Baker in insisting that all military ballots be counted, even if they were postmarked after election day or not postmarked at all!

His record is such a disgrace.
Patriot Act? pro-Bush.
Iraq? Very pro-Bush.
Samuel Alito? Loves the guy.
Pentagon money hogs? Joe's the faucet.

Lieberman might make a good villain in an old-style children's movie like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," but he does not belong in the United States Senate.

POLLS STILL OPEN UPDATE: STIRLING'S ON THE GROUND

Stirling Newberry is driving around Connecticut and he's getting a good feeling. Jane's not driving around, just driving the Lieberhunds crazy. You just know they rue the day they ever crossed her path! (And I doubt they're too fond of Christy or Pach or T. Rex or anyone who's over at Firedoglake! And I'm sure they're less than overjoyed about Stoller's visit either.)