Now, crawl off that high horse. I’m not defending Michael Richards’ rant, but if you’d seen it you certainly believe that this was a man who completely and indefensively lost it in public. He appeared to be dangerous, and not in the Michael O’Donoghue / Saturday Night Live sense of the word. Any audience member could have legitimately thought he or she was in physical danger.

So let me ask you this: would people be as upset about Richards’ performance had he merely used a different word?

And let me ask you another: is the word “nigger” worse than (wait for it) chink, spic, cunt, kike, jigaboo, or motherfucker?

What about context? How many books do we have to burn? Do we start with Dick Gregory’s ground-breaking autobiography? I’m assuming Mark Twain is already gone. Richard Pryor – you’re history. And take that routine you did with Chevy Chase with you. It ain’t funny no more.

Richards used the word six times and self-appointed spokespeople demanded he pay a fine of six million dollars. Oddly, Marlon Wayans said nigger roughly twice as many times on the very same stage a week later and was only fined $320.00. People demanded a boycott of the latest Seinfeld DVD release, as if Richards shared his Klan robes with Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Michael Richards should be condemned for his obvious racism as well as for his sickening lack of control (even by my standards, which are pretty low). If, as he claims, he’s not racist then he needs some help. He needs help for his self-control issues no matter what.

And that, folks, is that. Leave free speech alone. At the very least, language serves as a red flag identifying the enemy.

With urban police departments continuing to gun down unarmed black people willy-nilly, with our nation’s public schools a living joke and our slow-lynching health care system the most evil form of segregation seen in a century, let’s not worry about this comparatively trivial symptom and instead deal with the root causes once and for all.

Lying, fear-mongering bigoted hypocrite that he is, Joe is running around Connecticut today saying he is truly independent. He says is beholden to no party. Right, Joe. You’re not beholden to anyone except to the Republicans who financed your campaign, to the Republicans who rang all those doorbells and did all that campaign work, to Republicans like Jack Kemp and Michael Bloomberg who campaigned for you, to the so-called “Republican Jewish Coalition” that produced and signed your most hateful campaign literature, to Republicans like RNC chairman Ken Mehlman who gave your campaign access to their hallowed “get out the vote” Republican data bank and robo-phone equipment, and to the Republican majority who voted for you instead of their own straw-dog candidate.

Yeah. Joe’s beholden to no one. Right.

Lieberman won the election fair and square – as a Republican, using typical Republican tactics and resources. So Joe, do the right thing and declare yourself a Republican.

Of course you won’t be able to jockey yourself into committee chairmanships and positions should the Democrats win Virginia. But at least you’ll actually be living up to your phony-baloney campaign image of honesty and integrity. And you’ll still be able to wipe your ass with the Bill of Rights and threaten government censorship and bomb Arabs and slaughter American soldiers and all the other fun things you’ve grown used to.

Democrat challenger Ned Lamont peaked the day he beat Joe for the nod. That’s a shame; he had strong and decent positions on a great many issues but he couldn’t move them into the media’s anti-war spotlight. He obviously wasn’t “A” list material, but on a scale of 1 to 10 you could fit the Manhattan phonebook in between him and Joe.

As for the first most important aftereffect of this week’s election… That would be the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. That’s a genuine shame. Who’s Joe Lieberman going to pose with now?

Not content with his double-digit lead going into the election, this weekend damn near every Jew in Connecticut received a couple of mailers informing them that the Democratic Party has turned its back on Lieberman in favor of such well-known Jew haters as, and I quote, Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, John Dingell, and Al Sharpton.

Damn. Well known “Democrats” like Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, John Dingell, and Al Sharpton are big-time Jew haters. Who knew? Except for Lieberman, of course.

When a man plays the race card against his own people this close to an election that by all appearances will be a slam-dunk for him, his character becomes so clear even Ray Charles could see it clearly. And Ray Charles is dead.

Control of the Senate is going to be a close call. The Democrats need seven seats: six for majority, the seventh to make up for Lieberman. But if Joe becomes the swing vote – and, statistically, that is likely to happen often – then this lying bigot becomes the most dangerous man in Washington.

That means both the Democrats and the Republicans will court him constantly. It’s ironic that a man who keeps kosher will be offered so much pork. If the Democrats win control, Joe will be offered significant committee chairmanships. If the Republicans want Joe to switch in order to retain control, he will be offered significant committee chairmanships.

No matter which party wins, this filthy, disgusting, lying bigot will achieve great power. Going into the election, he wields the considerable power he already possesses to assure his victory by mindlessly branding people who have the courage to speak out against senseless murder as anti-Jewish.

Ashkenazi like myself have a phrase for it. A shanda for the goyim. Joe Lieberman, you are swine.

Yeah, well, I’m against it. I want what our nation’s founders put in the Constitution: a no party system.

The problem with Democrats and Republicans is that they are Democrats and Republicans. They endlessly fight their own Bizarro World Super Bowl; it has some half-time value, but little else. We don’t get the best people available, as the best are way too smart to take on the grief. We do get a lot of meaningless teevee ads from the DNC and the RNC that are, literally, in favor of no one. Like pit bulls on crack, all they do is attack.

So here’s what we should do. Registration opens on August 1st and absolutely everybody who pays a $25.00 filing fee before Labor Day can run. Nobody runs under a political party banner. Let’s keep the elephants and the donkeys in their zoos.

We allow a primary campaign for exactly one month. Candidates get to tell us whatever they want about themselves; they won’t have as much time to attack the mammoth herd. We hold the national primary on the first Sunday in October, and each candidate (obviously, no more than five) who gets at least 20% of the vote gets to run in the final election on the first Sunday in November. No automatic 50.1% wins – the entire electorate gets to chose from the most popular. There are no questions about who gets to participate in the debates: everybody who makes it to the championship round is in.

This will not eliminate the role of Big Money and influence, but by shorting both the playoff period and the championship round while simultaneously expanding the field – even by one candidate – the money will be spread out and the last-ditch fundraising round that fuels the worst in contemporary campaigning will be lessened. Incumbents will have less time to score points by suddenly acknowledging they need their community’s support.

It’s not a panacea, but it would be an improvement.

Oddly enough, such systems are in place in various parts of the world, and have been put in place (with respect to the party-less structure) in a number of significant local elections across America.

At the very least, the bullshit level will be reduced some. At best… well… maybe Gary Coleman will have his shot at the White House.

For a long time I criticized the Blues for their 2006 campaign strategy of doing nothing and letting the Republicans beat themselves up. I’ve got to admit their strategy worked for a while. But after months of deaths in Iraq, bombs in North Korea, sex scandals in Washington and breathtaking incompetence in the White House, things have died down. The Blue Tsunami subsided and control of the House and Senate is a 50-50 proposition; more so the Senate than the House, but the Reds are still within reach of keeping control of each.

The problem is, 51% of either chamber ain’t good enough. The Bushites have done so much damage in the past three years that we need a veto-proof majority. Stasis is not improvement.

Given the wonderful performance of the Republican Party the past six years (at least), that should have been a no-brainer. It could have happened, if only the Democrats actually ran a campaign. Contrary to the Republican hype, the Blues are not the tax-and-spend party, but nobody believes it. Contrary to Republican whining, the Democrats actually have ideas to offer and alternatives to propose, and they’ve done a damn good job keeping ‘em to themselves.

Most important, Americans believe the Reds look and act stronger than the Blues, and these are times that require the resources of strength. From the way the Democratic Party crawled around during Campaign ’06, you can’t fault voters for this impression.

Here’s a clue for you political novices: the purpose of “negative” campaigning is not to get people to vote for your candidate. The purpose is to get people to not vote for the other guy. That’s all it takes, and the Democrats still haven’t figured this out. They left the Republicans lots of opportunities, and if you don’t believe they know how to take advantage of such opportunities, you haven’t been paying attention these past seven years.

The Democrats might manage to snatch out some sort of Pyrrhic victory and no doubt they’ll dance and sing at what little they get. I can appreciate that; I feel good every October 2nd when the Chicago Cubs are still playing baseball. But this year the Democrats had a shot at a real victory, their best shot since 1964. According to Newsweek, for crying out loud, the 51% of Americans would like to see George W. Bush impeached.

Let me repeat that: 51% of Americans would like to see George W. Bush impeached. And the Democrats are still fighting the Republicans for 51% of either chamber. This betrays a level of incompetence that was heretofore only seen within the Bush Administration. Are the Blues any better?

Oh, yeah, as for South Park. It seems lots of people in Australia and England are up in arms about the current episode that, briefly, shows Steve Erwin in hell. They complained it was in bad taste – well, duhhh, it’s South Park; if you don’t like bad taste switch over to ToonDisney – and insensitive to Erwin’s family and fans. Steve Erwin. The idiot who last year used his baby as alligator bait. That Steve Erwin.

Get a life.

Case in point: everybody’s favorite wrestling coach, Speaker of the House Denny “Mad Cow” Hastert. Accused by fellow Republicans of covering up the Foley Follies, he stood his ground against demands from the Right for his resignation. His response? We’re going to bust us the press and some Democrats.

If you think I’m kidding, here’s the entire exchange between a reporter and Mad Cow during Wednesday’s press conference:

REPORTER: Can we get the record straight on a couple of things. Tell us when you learned that there was more than a minor problem that this was truly something that had a predatory feel to it. And secondly, after you’ve answered that question, if you really did only learn a week or so ago, were you not let down by staff members who seem to have known much more and shouldn’t some of them have come from your own staff if not you personally?

We know there are reports of people that knew it and kind of fed it out or leaked it to the press. That’s why we’ve asked for investigation. So, let me just say, that’s why we’ve asked for an investigation – to find who that is. If it’s members of my staff, or they didn’t do the job, we will act appropriately. If it’s somebody else’s staff, they ought to act appropriately as well.

Excuse me, Representative Mad Cow? Who is it you’re investigating? Ex-Rep. Foley, who quit Congress and now, for some absurd reason, is in rehab? You know, the one who hit on those teenagers? Or the press who outed him? Or the Democrats who, as far as I can tell, are far less effective at playing these political games than your people have been?

Oh, and by the way. You said that you hadn’t heard of the explicit language until last Friday. O.K. Fine. But when did you hear about Foley’s chasing pages?

Whoever leaked this stuff out should get a medal, probably from the congressman who sponsored that recent legislation that was supposed to prevent this sort of thing.

Except that guy’s in rehab right now.

Immediately, the Republican Core trumped their Clinton card, saying it is hypocritical for the anti-Right to chastise Mr. Foley for wanting to do what Bill Clinton did with a 22 year-old woman. Since these pages were 16 year-old boys, the Republican Core has now come out (pun not initially intended) ipso facto in favor of underage gay sex.

That’s quite an event, and I trust the Washington Post is now conducting an investigation into contributions from NAMBLA members to Republican candidates.

Amusingly, House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert said he was told of the situation some six months previously. If one questions the seriousness of my claim – that the Republican Core has come out in favor of underage gay sex – please reconsider the previous sentence. The chief Republican in Congress was aware of Mr. Foley’s sexual harassment of underage boys who work as Congressional pages for most of 2006.

You may recall in 2000 the Republican Party campaigned on a very high moral platform. Of course, this was before we learned they stole that election as the first act in an endless series of dangerous and deadly lies. Last I checked, this sort of thing was in conflict with several of their vaunted Ten Commandments.

Keep this in mind when you vote next month. Maybe the Democrats are a bunch of lame wussies, but damn, they haven’t stooped this low.

This is really a shame, because the Democratic Party is one of only two parties permitted under our institutionally imposed power structure. But maybe there’s hope.

In a Fox “News” interview that followed the week after Disney’s made-for-teevee lying hatchet job about the build-up to 9-11, Bill Clinton finally went on the attack, disclosing with appropriate fervor that when he was president he was trying to assassinate Osama bin Laden and that he failed. But in failing, at least he left detailed notes and reports for his successor, who promptly did absolutely nothing until the September following Clinton’s departure from office.

Within hours, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said no such reports were given to the Bush Administration. Her comments contradicted recorded history and testimony from those who were involved, some of whom Bush appointees. It was really, really cute. Secretary Rice put the entire weight of the Bush Administration’s credibility up against Bill Clinton’s.

Fox “News” honcho Roger Ailes said Clinton gave him “$100,000 worth of free publicity.” Big deal. $100,000 won’t even buy you a quarter-hour worth of advertising on Fox “News.” Ailes also said Clinton’s behavior was an insult to all journalists, putting him in a good position for the news media’s hypocrite of the year award. Ailes was G.H.W. Bush’s hatchet man and the person behind the live frontal assault on another journalist, CBS’s Dan Rather. Ailes’ comments were simply and completely asinine; they were also what you’d expect from George W. Bush’s pet Joseph Goebbels.

It is clear that Bill Clinton’s remarks inspired some Democrats to actually grow some balls and stand up and defend themselves, their politics, and the basic inhumanity of supporting an administration that would debate, let alone ramrod, the legality, the morality and the efficacy of torture. I hope it continues; maybe the Democrats will start to be viewed as a real alternative to the right-wing extremism and lies that boil out of the White House and fester inside of their fools and lackeys.

Like I said, maybe there’s hope. Yeah, right. And as we Chicago Cubs fans have been saying for 98 consecutive seasons, “wait ‘till next year.”

Some have gone so far as to call Chavez a dictator. That’s amusing, as the man was democratically elected to his position in a ballot that was a lot less suspicious than the one under which Bush seized power.

When it comes to name calling, “El Diablo” is pretty tame. It sure beats what religious right leader Pat Robertson said about Chavez one year ago. Pat Robertson demanded the assassination of Hugo Chavez by the United States government. A lot of Americans are concerned about the influence the religious right has over the Bush administration; can we blame foreigners who form their opinions of us through our actions and our threats for taking this seriously? It’s not as though Bush and his minions have gone to overwhelming distances to suck up to Robertson’s legions.

What’s more offensive: calling American’s Idiot-In-Chief “el Diablo” or calling for the assassination of the democratically elected head of Venezuela? Which one constitutes the greater threat?

Ever overly polite, the liberals said Chavez was out of order for doing so on American soil. Of course, they are wrong: the United Nations is not American soil. It is like the Latverian Embassy, except Doctor Doom is on the outside. I believe both Maher and Stewart have called Bush an idiot, as in the gagline “it takes a village idiot.”

Chavez had launched a program to provide cheap heating fuel to disadvantaged Americans, particularly those in the troubled New York area. He offered massive relief to New Orleans when George Bush and the United States of America were sitting on their asses in panicked denial, an offer rejected by Bush.

Venezuela is our fourth largest supplier of oil. They operate in the United States under the name “Citgo,” one of the least expensive of the major gasoline retailers. As such, they provide massive competition to the interests of Exxon and Haliburton.

Hmmmmm…

We arrived the following morning. He had a Do Not Resuscitate order, but the family did not want to remove the breathing tube until Linda, Adriane and I could get there, allowing us the privilege of saying goodbye and, perhaps, allowing my father the opportunity to know his whole family was by his side.

I had steeled myself as best I could, but I was not prepared to see him wired up to the breathing machine and all the other high-tech gizmos. It was clear that my father had actually died the day before and was being kept “alive” only in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 sense of the word. He didn’t want that, and nor did my sister. Understandably, my mother was split on the issue but she quickly realized that he was in pain and discomfort. After talking with the doctors, we decided to honor his wishes and have the breathing tube removed the following morning.

After he was taken off the machines, my father was able to summon what little energy he had left to communicate his awareness of our presence. His last act was to acknowledge my mother’s kiss on the forehead with a loving smile. Within six hours of removing him from the machines, he died. Dad had a long and strong life, and if he had one legacy, it was his complete and absolute loving devotion to my mother. He had a good, respectable and honorable life that spanned from World War One through the Depression and the Holocaust to Iraq War Two.

Here’s the point. The decision to live – and therefore not to live – is one only you can make. Not your family, not your doctors, not even your spiritual counselors and certainly not anybody else’s shamen or gurus. It’s yours and yours alone. It’s probably your only truly inalienable right.

But only if you let people know. Given the society in which we live – one where ladder makers have to put a notice on the top step warning you that you might fall – you’ve got to do so in writing. One way or another, and there are more than just two. Personally, I don’t want to go out looking like Uncle Creepy at the scuba gear shop, but if you think you’ve got the miracle card in your deck of life, go ahead and draw for it with my blessing.

But get it down in writing. It’ll take a lot of guilt off of your family and friends, and you will have taken charge of the last thing you can take charge of.

There are a ton of Living Will forms online, some free, some not. Laws differ from state to state, and there are a ton of sundry considerations that you should work out before you start filling in forms. Google “living will” but you first might want to get some background. You might want to start with this bit from the University of Buffalo: http://wings.buffalo.edu/faculty/research/bioethics/lwill.html

For example, while the media is focusing on Ned Lamont’s defeat of Joe Lieberman and how that puts a serious anti-war spin on the 2006 elections, President Old Faithful holds a press conference and declares we will remain in Iraq as long as he is in office. Then the next day the Marines start an involuntary call-up of 2,500 reservists for active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Do you think George is stupid enough to say “there is no necessity for a draft?” Or would he just be lying?

Republicans are trying to distance themselves from their southern racist image and, therefore, from Virginia Senator George Allen after Allen referred to a brown skinned American-born man as a foreign-born macaca (you know, the polite form of “jigaboo”). So what does President Old Faithful do? Does he do what’s politically correct? Does he do the honorable thing and speak out against such behavior? Does he change the subject?

Nope. He decides to host a private fund-raiser for George Allen!

I’ll tell you, George Bush has done more for making the teevee news interesting than a thousand Katie Couric colonoscopies. He’s my favorite sitcom, next to “Everybody Hates Chris.”

Karl Rove should only be spinning in his grave.

We won’t have to deal with increasing the minimum wage. Supply and demand will take care of it. Wal-Mart workers and family farmers alike will feel valued, as will capitalists in general. Before too long we will achieve near-100% employment.

The need for war will be lessened as we won’t be pounding out more cannon fodder and people who actually pay taxes certainly aren’t going to fight. Moreover, if we skip the better part of a generation we will have reduced the need for war: religious and tribal concerns that have been handed down from parent to child for over a millennium will be curtailed. By the time the first crop of new babies gets old enough to strap a bomb on their backs, somebody just might ask “wait a minute – exactly why are we doing this?”

Crime will decrease; we always blame crime on the kids anyway. Alcohol prices will drop a bit, and drivers will have more room on the highway where they can drift. It’ll be easier to get a quiet seat at a restaurant. You won’t have to be “this” high in order to get on the roller coaster; almost everybody will be “this” high. Besides, the lines will be shorter.

The money we save from our education budgets and from the condoization of schools can be moved over to rebuild our infrastructure. The money we save from our defense budget can be used to reduce our taxes. See? There’s something here for everybody.

We can hit the reboot button on our so-called natural resources. The demand for energy will drop, the need for clean water and food will drop, and America will be able to feed the world in order to maintain its GNP. And, finally, at long last, the Republicans will be right about Social Security!

Land values will freeze for a while, but I have faith in the human psyche: people will want more land with more trees and grass and flowers and stuff. This, in turn, will help clean up the air and the overall environment, and more people will be inspired to become poets.

Of course, there are negatives. There must be. I just can’t think of any. Well, I haven’t figured out who will deliver the pizza within 30 minutes, but it sounds like we can deal with that. Our cultural product will not change; it’s been geared to 12 year olds for the past five generations. Perhaps pop music will become more listenable if we have a shrinking market for hopeless, whinny tunes. Jerry Lee Lewis and the Richards – Keith and Little – will always be there to entertain us. As well as the cockroaches that ultimately succeed us.

This plan will only work if it is done on a global basis, but that’s okay as well: it’ll give Dick Cheney something to do. However, once we get back into the birthing business we will need to do so slowly in order to make appropriate adjustments.

Couples should be limited to one child every five years (I’m not heartless; they can sell twins to childless families), and – this is critical – they should have to pass a thorough written test in order to get a conception permit. No longer would the qualifications for parenthood be the ability for men to produce ejaculate and women to spread their legs twice. No longer will we produce a generation of self-righteous spoiled brats who are demonstrably dumber than the preceding generation.

The 15-year ban on the conception and birth of new children will be a win / win for everybody. Write your congressperson today!

Better still, send ‘em a card. Hallmark will need the business.

Gotta love the irony.

Shouting people down has become quite the spectator sport, and is by no means the property of the left. It has long been a major communications medium. Check out nearly any right-wing talk show (except, interestingly, G. Gordon Liddy’s) and you’ll hear the host stomp all over callers with opposing views, routinely disconnecting those who they cannot best in debate. People on the extremes of any popular issue – and there are a lot more of them than you might expect – are so polarized that any exception to their narrowly defined views makes one subject to ceaseless harassment, caterwauling, and name-calling.

The most current incarnation of this phenomenon is right here on the Internet, where people routinely get quoted, misquoted, partially quoted and quoted out of contest. Oftentimes this misinformation finds its way into the “Wikipedia,” an online disinformation source where anybody can post any lies and deceits they want which will stay there until the victim discovers the problem and figures out how to correct it. By then, of course, damage already has been done. Old time reporters, even those who grew up in the traditions of Pulitzer and Hearst, consider this an abomination – nothing more than organized mudslinging. McLuhanists recognize its inevitability.

I say this because a friend of mine dared to challenge the conventional lefty wisdom of our nation’s attitudes towards militaristic Moslem fundamentalists. Mike Baron wrote a piece called Manifesto for a blog called The Conservative Voice (http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/16827.html). Now with a name like that, you might think it would be unlikely for Mike to be advocating the Jews be driven into the Mediterranean, and you’d be right. Occasionally he indulges in techniques common to this admittedly left-wing blog, but he puts forth some interesting arguments that deserve to be heard and considered by anybody who is short of being a close-minded absolutist.

I might disagree with some or much of what Mike says, but I try to take at least one step back from being a close-minded absolutist. Please make no mistake about this: Mike Baron is one of the most intelligent and well-reasoned people I know. There are references in his work that amaze and astonish me.

Since Mike writes a lot of comic books (co-creator of Nexus, creator of The Badger, first writer on the original Punisher monthly), his comments hit the Newsarama blog (http://blog.newsarama.com/2006/08/10/mike-barons-manifesto/) and the predictable assaults were launched: Right-wing nut. A hateful, spoiled child. A sickness. Good to have a name to avoid.

That last one’s great for promoting free speech, isn’t it? Let’s avoid people with whom we disagree. Holy Ann Coulter, Batman!

Like I said, I don’t agree with everything Mike said, not half of it, and I strongly disagree with his use of the phrase “Fox ‘News’” without quotes around the latter word. But if you cut through the flippancy – the same demand I make of my readers – there are some interesting points of view here, beginning with the evaluation of the all-too-serious threat of religious fundamentalism of all stripes. That’s hardly a right-wing pro-Bush statement, as the threat Christian fundamentalists have represented ever since the First Crusade is all too serious as well.

I strongly suspect some of these same people were deeply offended when people like Neal Boorz and Bill O’Reilly brand those who disagree with them as traitors, a word synonymous in their lexicon with the words “liberal,” “democrat” and “Communist.” That, too, is ironic. These people do not understand a phenomenon that, in a fair and equitable world, is as profound as gravity.

Free speech cannot be the exclusive property of one point of view. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

I think Uncle $crooge said that.

Joe tried to paint Ned Lamont as a one-issue candidate. That wasn’t the case – the Democratic electorate didn’t care for Joe’s lack of attention to local concerns, and for some reason Democrats were equally concerned about his unproductive closeness to the president. But as it turns out, it would have been more than enough.

According to exit polling, three out of four people who voted in the primary were opposed to the war. This will have a major impact upon those running in November all across the nation. It is not good news for Republicans, and it is not good news for the dickless Democrats – in other words, nearly all of ‘em.

Joe lost by more than 10,000 votes, and that doesn’t count the record-setting number of absentee voters. And that’s despite a last minute surge of Republican and independent pro-war crossover voters that ate into Ned’s 13 point lead. The pollsters only polled Democrats, which shows up the fault of the process.

Joe filed as an independent candidate. So why do I say the witch is dead? After all, the same polls that gave Joe the 13 point lead said Joe would win in a three way race against Ned.

Well, for one thing, Connecticut is a blue state, the Republican candidate doesn’t even have the support of the Republican party (last month they tried to talk him into quitting the race), and the heavy-hitter Democrats like Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton who supported Lieberman in the primary were tripping over each other to make good on their promise to support the winner of that primary. Typically and hypocritically, Hillary already started damage control last week.

But, most important, Joe Lieberman is a three-time loser. He lost (effectively) the 2000 vice-presidental race. In fact, he had so little confidence in Al Gore that he simultaneously ran for reelection to the senate, which all of a sudden doesn’t sit well with Connecticut Democrats. He ran for president in 2004 and couldn’t even make that “three-way tie for third place” he bragged about. And now he couldn’t even get his own party’s nomination for another term. That almost never happens.

Come November, Ned Lamont will become Connecticut’s next senator.