Like all Bush sycophants, Joe Lieberman has been beating the Iran war drum for some time. This from January 2006:

U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said Monday the nation may need to take military action to force Iran to abandon its nuclear program if diplomacy and economic sanctions fail. "Obviously, the hope here is in a concerted international effort -- first in diplomacy and then, second, the use of economic sanctions," Lieberman said during a visit to Electric Boat in Groton. "But I've always believed that you cannot take the military option off the table."

The worst person in the world, O'Reilly, recognizes Joe as the Bush Cheerleader for an Iran War:

Joseph Lieberman and others do understand that danger and did not -- he did not sell out his country to pander to the anti-war vote. For that, Lieberman was defeated.  Iran's betting we Americans have no will to restrain their jihad, and judging from the Connecticut vote last night, they might be right.

Joe's role as Iran warmonger for Bush is critical and why the GOP will go all out for him. More.

The two faced Joe Lieberman can't make up his mind now - to be a proud Republican or to pretend not to be a Republican. Today it seems Joe is for staying the course, in the ditch, in Iraq:

Mr. Lieberman is speaking more forcefully and in starker detail about why he believes the United States must remain militarily engaged in Iraq.

And he is painting a dire picture of what will happen if American forces are withdrawn too quickly: civil war in Iraq, skyrocketing oil prices, an emboldened Iran and expanding Islamic terrorism.

God forbid any of that happen. Sheesh. That's the amazing thing, Lieberman is really a dumbass. A craven two faced dumbass, but a dumbass. More.

I have the luxury of, unlike many Democrats, already having a pretty low opinion of Nat Hentoff due to his, imo, limited intellect and propensity for falsehood. Now others can see it as well. Via Charles Pierce and Media Matters, we find Hentoff repeating the vile false smear of antisemitism in Lamont supporters - published in the Moonie Paper no less:

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman -- now an insistently independent Democrat -- was pilloried during his losing primary contest with Ned Lamont, not only for his stand on the Iraq war but also because he is a Jew. Being one myself for many years, I was not surprised by the centuries-old persistence of this hatred among several of the fiercely anti-Bush bloggers during the campaign.

The pathetic thing is Hentoff relies exclusively on the thoroughly debunked Lanny Davis tripe for his evidence. Media Matters goes through it again but it is telling that this nonsense will not go away. More.

I hate to pick on Josh Marshall's crew again on CT-Sen, but dammit, they just ask for it. Today, their elections page writes:

It's now been 2 full weeks since Ned Lamont defeated Senator Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. Whether it's true or not, the general perception of this period seems to be that Joe has rolled up his sleeves and gotten down to business while Ned's head remains floating in the rarified climes of his primary win. Obviously this thing is far from over but Joe had about the best post-primary-loss 2 weeks he could've hoped for. Instead of pulling a Blondie and fading away and radiating, Lieberman went on the offensive and fought back effectively, if not admirably.

This is the same obtuse take we read here from some diarists who failed to understand that what Lieberman did was merely become the GOP candidate in the race. As I wrote yesterday, what Joe did was a political blunder and that he now is trying to undo the damage. I'll explain a bit more on the flip.  

Joe Lieberman spent the week after the August 8 primary doing his best Dick Cheney imitation:

Stephanopoulos: "Senator Lieberman thinks that your [Feingold's] approach will strengthen the terrorists and it's a victory for terrorists. . . .

The GOP appreciated it:

"It would be far better for Republicans if Joe Lieberman won than Lamont," Mr. [Ari] Fleischer continued. . . .  [W]hat kind of message would it send if a strong defense, pro-Iraq senator won in this environment? It would prove you can be for what George W. Bush is doing in Iraq and still win, even in the Northeast."

Apparently Joe is discovering that he may not have made the wisest political moves that week. He is now trying to walk it back. More.

What if . . . Ed Case wins the Hawaii "Democratic" primary (it is an open primary, which makes no freaking sense, open "primaries" are an oxymoron) in September? Then the pro-Iraq Debacle, DLC candidate will carry the Demoratic banner in November in Hawaii. But that is up to the Dem voters in Hawaii, except it isn't totally. In any event, what if Case wins?

[Note: Hawaii's Sore Loser Law looks airtight.] Does Akaka run as an "Independent Democrat?" Who would support that? Not me. If the Hawaii Dem Party has accepted this open primary nonsense, then they live with their choices. Respect the result. But what does Sen. Daniel Inouye say? Since he supports Lieberman, how could he not support Akaka?

But what about the reverse? What if Akaka wins narrowly and Case decides he "cannot let that result stand?" Let's consider that on the flip.

You may not have seen it, but there are a number of folks here that think we are spending too much time on CT-Sen. So strongly do they feel this way that they have repeated this sentiment in 8 million comments and 900 diaries. Most of us remain unpersuaded by their argument. Now some in the other blogs have decided that they too should add their voice to this call. Josh Marshall's guest poster adds his important voice:

Should progressives shift their money and attention from the Connecticut Senate race to more important contests? Absolutely.

. . . Lamont v. Lieberman is a carnival sideshow, a titilating and distracting spectacle. Rove is the carnival barker. So ignore the hoopla and keep moving on down the midway, folks. The main event is still to come, and it will be in places like Montana, Missouri, and Ohio. We've come too far to get side-tracked now.

Heh. Thanks for that insight. So original the thinking. Anyway, this DK person gets worse. I'll you about it on the flip.

The reactions to the Q Poll by Josh Marshall and Ezra Klein strike me as wrong headed.

Josh thinks "What does surprise me though is that Lieberman didn't take more of a hit from the mere fact of his primary loss." Ezra says "It would be bitter irony for the left if their successful challenge to Lieberman left him more powerful than he'd ever otherwise dreamed of being."

I don't see the logic in either observation. My thinking on the other side.

Here's a thought - What difference is there between Joe Lieberman and NoMentum endorsing (h/t magnifico) George Felix Allen, Junior? "Not enough" difference.

The Lieberman Campaign makes clear that race baiting will be central to Joe's de facto Republican run:

Lieberman aides said that Mr. Lamont's association with Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson -- both of whom campaigned vigorously for Mr. Lamont -- was a political albatross that helped explain why Mr. Lieberman believed he could win over a majority of voters.

"Primary night was the first time that many Connecticut voters saw Lamont on TV, and he's surrounding himself with two of the more divisive and problematic figures in the Democratic Party," said Dan Gerstein, a veteran Lieberman aide who was appointed communications director for the campaign last week.

Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson? Joe didn't want their support? How about the support of any African-Americansin CT? John Lewis coming back to Connecticut Joe? What a despicable campaign and what despicable people are involved in it. More.

I have been very skeptical about Joe Lieberman's commitment to support Harry Reid as Leader of the Senate should he be elected as an Independent. Given the Republican support for Lieberman, both in statements, and by contributions, it seemed to me that at the very least, Lieberman would be noncommittal.

I was wrong:

Though Joe Lieberman declared before losing the primary to Ned Lamont that he would support Harry Reid as Democratic Senate leader, many have since raised the question of whether Lieberman would unequivocally promise to back Reid again, now that Lieberman is running as an independent, is getting campaign donations from Republicans, and needs some GOP votes to win the general election. So I posed the question to the Lieberman campaign. The answer:

Yes.

More.

So Bush supports Lieberman:

Bush fixin' to support Lieberman? More shortly.

In this morning's press briefing, Tony Snow said President Bush would not endorse Alan Schlesinger (R-CT) the Republican nominee in the race.

Let's see, the official Republican nominee is out (and so are Sonja Henie and Danny Noonan, Caddyshack reference), so I guess Bush will take Joe Mentum. As well he should. Lieberman has been there for Bush in all the tough spots. Now that Joe is in a tough spot, "bipartisanship" demands Bush return the favor. More.

It is his natural state - Joe Klein's default position is wanker. His latest example:

Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in last week's Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut precipitated the expected torrent of rubbish from left-wing blognuts and conservative wingnuts. There was a nauseating triumphalism on both sides, the unblinking assertion that this one poorly attended summer primary provided a lesson of earth-shattering significance to the future of American politics. Maybe it did, but I hope not.

The wingnuts used Connecticut as a rationale for continuing to wave the bloody shirt of Islamist terrorism as a partisan bludgeon. Vice President Dick Cheney, the nation's wingnut in chief, actually said Lieberman's defeat would give aid and comfort to our terrorist "adversaries and al-Qaeda types." . . .

Let's start with the "poorly attended primary" nonsense. A record setting turnout is what it was. But facts and Klein have rarely been in the same room. But that's just the beginning of the wankery. More on the other side.

The man of principle , now flip flops on Iraq:

[LIEBERMAN's NEW AD] And I'm staying because I want to help end the war in Iraq in a way that brings stability to the Mid-East and doesn't leave us even more vulnerable.

Yesterday, Lieberman said this:

If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out [of Iraq] by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them and they will strike again.

More--

What separates Jacob Weisberg:

Political analysts tend to overinterpret the results of isolated elections. But you can hardly read too much into Ned Lamont's defeat of Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's Aug. 8 primary. This is a signal event that will have a huge and lasting negative impact on the Democratic Party. The result suggests that instead of capitalizing on the massive failures of the Bush administration, Democrats are poised to re-enact a version of the Vietnam-era drama that helped them lose five out six presidential elections between 1968 and the end of the Cold War.

and John Gibson?

Hang on, Dems. Here come the Pol Pots of your party. And if you were for national security, you are now emphatically not. Or else. Remember the mountain of skulls in Cambodia? It's the Democrats new reality now that the anti-war rabble has tasted blood by taking Lieberman down,"

Nothing but a few four syllable words. More.

A few months ago I wrote a diary entitled Relativity, Uncertainty, Big Tents and the Political Space-Time Curvature. My thesis was, in the main, as follows:

I want to introduce my own concept of political space time curvature to help us better understand the Politics of Contrast (or Definition, as Texeira and Halpin call it) and the need for a Big Tent Democratic Party.. . . . [continued in extended]

Kevin Drum:

THE PERCEPTION OF POWER...[B]ecause . . Wittman . . .and even the Lieberman campaign have harped on about those crazy bloggers throughout the campaign, they are inflating the power of blogs in people's minds. . .   [T]he chatter about the power of the blogs is probably more important than whether they really had any power to begin with. . .

But the real power blogger in my mind was my great friend Swami, ctkeith, now famous as the inventor of The Kiss:

. . . U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman's fall from grace, in the eyes of state Democratic Party activist Keith Crane, began with a kiss. Crane had stood by the senator, if only grudgingly . . . But the peck on Lieberman's cheek from President George W. Bush after the 2005 State of the Union Address left him feeling betrayed. . . . [T]he Branford resident, who proudly wears a button bearing the photograph and passes out buttons everywhere he goes, joined . . . a political Nor'easter threatening to tear down the house of Joe.

The rest of the story below.

Breaking my hiatus for a Daily Kos public service announcement:

Lieberman vs. Lamont  
Aired: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 11-[Noon] ET

By host Tom Ashbrook:

Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut has spent three terms as a moderate Democrat in the US Senate. He shared the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in 2000, coming within a whisper of being the country's Democratic vice-president.

Hear about the Lieberman-Lamont battle in Connecticut, and its national implications for the Democrats and beyond.

Guests

·    Av Harris, Capital reporter WNPR in Hartford, CT
·    Ned Lamont, running in primary against Senator Joseph Lieberman
·    Bill Curry, columnist for The Hartford Courant
·    Joan McCarter, contributing editor and blogger for the Daily Kos
·    Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute.

A major Right wing site has chosen to support a troll's campaign started at this site to out me.

The writing is on the wall. I will likely be giving up blogging as a result.

If people were wondering about why I was so adamant about this, I hope this explains it.

I have never written about my clients and whenever I had a conflict, I disclosed it. But people of ill will have no decency or  limits.

If I sound bitter, it is because I am quite bitter about this.  

So, this is probably so long kossacks and bloggers. I fade away.