'Cism? You Make the Call

"I can't make things worse you say? Watch this."-Rod Blahblahblahblah


The best way to start the year off is with some good old 'cism, and its even better when its gubment 'cism.

With Illinois Gov. (for now) Rod Blagojevich in enough trouble for putting Illinois' Senate seat up for sale, I guess he figured he might as well kick it up a notch and appoint a Senator despite Senate Democrats pleading with him not to.

Appointing any old senator wasn't enough for Blagojevich though, he had to appoint a black man, Ron Burris.

Senate Democrats had already planned on not accepting anybody Blagojevich appointed, but the racial dynamic added on (Burris will be the only black Senator.) makes it an even stickier situation.

You hear that? That's the sound of Jesse Jackson fainting from the possiblities of all the grandstanding he'll get to do on this issue.

I wouldn't be surprised if Blagojevich just went all out and snorted coke in the courtroom as they send him off to jail, he clearly doesn't care about anything at this point.

Oh yeah, Happy New Year.

It's been a long time . . .

Yeah yeah, holidays and excuses and whatnot. But even while we were all celebrating Baby Jesus' birth by sending Him some Baby Einstein DVD's, things were happening here, in America. It's almost the new year, which means our new and improved (?) congress will meet soon. Except a bunch of states have no idea who will be their new unelected Senator, for various reasons. Let's take a look at some of them.

• New York With Hill Dawg moving up in the world as Secretary of State, someone has to replace her as political dynasty senator. The names everyone is mentioning are Caroline Kennedy, whose main qualification is her last name, and Andrew Cuomo, who has the same going for him only fewer Americans care enough about his politician father to be outraged. Governor David Patterson has to appoint someone, anybody, just to hold things down for two years until the people can vote some wretched monster into office. It will probably be Cuomo.
  

• Illinois Even though Senate Majority Leader and ten year old girl Harry Reid said he will fight any nominee put forth by corrupt Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, Blago announced today the he will nominate former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to replace Barack Obama in the Senate. He's essentially daring Reid to do something that could be interpreted as racially insensitive (refusing to let a qualified black man take the seat of Obama,) which means Charles was wrong. There IS a race card, and Rod Blagojevich plays it better than anyone. You gotta tip your hat to whitey.

• Delaware Now that Joe Biden is out of the Senate and into the Vice President's chair, where he can do no real harm, the eastern seaboard's most boring state will send Ted Kaufman to Washington to replace him. Kaufman spent 21 years on Biden's staff and is just keeping it warm until Biden's son (and Delaware's attorney general) Beau gets home from Iraq in time for the 2010 elections.

• Colorado Didn't know Colorado was missing a Senator, did you? Nobody does. Current Senator Ken Salazar has been appointed Obama's new Secretary of the Interior, so Governor Bill Ritter has to replace him with someone, we'll say Mike Shanahan. I hear he's looking for work now.

• Minnesota Al Franken has an INSURMOUNTABLE 49 vote lead in the recount that will never go away, even when you try and pretend it isn't there. There's a little over 1,000 absentee ballots left to be counted, unless there's some other meaningless hurdle that we have to get through. Norm Coleman's strategy of "have people stop counting votes" has so far proven to be a failure. No one wins, one side just loses more slowly © Mr. Prezbo.
  

So there was an election yesterday AGAIN

That is your new old Senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, who retained his seat in a runoff yesterday against the democrat, Jim Martin. Chambliss got 57% of the vote this time, with turnout down almost 50% from the real election day.

This ends the Democrats desire for an unblockable super majority of 60 seats in the Senate, which was probably never going to happen anyway. We're still waiting on the ballots to be recounted in Minnesota, where Norm Coleman has a 303 vote lead. The recount is scheduled to be certified December 16, but who knows if they'll lose count or something by then.

Election day results keep pouring in

Convicted felon Ted "Senator" Stevens is not going back to Washington. The Anchorage Daily News is reporting that he trails his Democratic rival, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by over 2,000 votes, and they're actually running out of ballots to count in Alaska. And FiveThirtyEight, the rightest of all political prediction sites, has called the race for Begich.

The ADC does say that recount is "likely," but I'm not sure who would call for one. Stevens could, but all that would do is force the Republican caucus to expel him, which they clearly don't want to have to do. The GOP would rather he just lose outright and save them the embarrassment that would come from having to formally expel one of their senior members for being a felon, so I doubt they'll make as much noise as they have been in Minnesota.

Anyway, stay tuned for more information on votes that were cast two weeks ago.

What to do with Joe Lieberman?

WOOO, I am totally screwed!

Joe Lieberman has had things pretty good for the last couple of years. He got re-elected to the Senate despite losing the endorsement of the Connecticut Democratic party over his support for the Iraq War, and he's been all over TV the last few months stumping for his friend John McCain. He even got to speak in prime time at the Republican National Convention this year. I don't think he got this kind of shine when he was actually on a presidential ticket eight years ago.

But now the election is over, his guy lost and his fate is in the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who did not like the idea of the kinda-Democrat acting as a surrogate for the Republican nominee, speaking at the RNC and trashing the Democratic nominee as someone who couldn't put "country first" and for "voting against funding our troops." Reid is displeased.

“Joe Lieberman has done something that I think was improper, wrong, and I’d like — if we weren’t on television, I’d use a stronger word of describing what he did,” he said on CNN Friday.

Reid has three options. He can either forgive Lieberman in the spirit of bipartisanship (a theme Barack Obama has stressed since winning the election last week,) throw him out of the Democratic caucus or give him a lesser punishment, like stripping Lieberman of his title as chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. But even if Reid (who has said he will leave it up to the Democratic senate caucus) does take away Lieberman's chairmanship, that could be the last straw anyway. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already discussed with lieberman the idea of caucusing with the Republicans.

“Senator Lieberman’s preference is to stay in the caucus, but he’s going to keep all his options open,” a Lieberman aide said. “McConnell has reached out to him and at this stage his position is he wants to remain in the caucus but losing the chairmanship is unacceptable.”

Whatever happens, Lieberman's in a bad position. The best thing to do would be to remain in the Democratic caucus, at least if he ever wants to be re-elected (Connecticut currently has zero Republicans representing them in either the House or Senate, and that's not a conincedence.) However, the odds of him remaining with the Democrats and not facing some kind of punishment is likely slim. If he gets his chairmanship taken away, it's obvious the democrats don't really want him, and there's no point to sticking around. But would his reception among Republicans be any warmer? Remember, one of the reasons McCain did not pick Lieberman as his running mate was because of the potential backlash he would have faced among the party's base. Are the same people who might have staged a brawl on the floor of the Xcel Center if this guy had been nominated for VP going to embrace him as a Republican senator?

So basically, Joe Lieberman is doomed to serve out the next four years as either an almost Democrat who no Democrat trusts or as a pseudo-Republican who no Republican really likes.

UPDATE: HuffPo is reporting that Obama has told party officials he wants Lieberman to stay. They might let him keep his chairmanship in Homeland Security but take him out of the committees on Armed Services and Environment & Public Works. So hooray for bipartisanship maybe.