Righteous Cause Dept. : Raising Big Bucks to Neuter Joe Lieberman

Graphic by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog.
For ad campaign aimed at Connecticut voters:
MoveOn raising big bucks to stop Lord Lieberman

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / December 18, 2009

MoveOn.org, one of the largest political action committees in the country is, as I post this, just about $75,000 short of raising one million dollars for a campaign to neuter Senator Joe Lieberman's single-handed attempt to stall or kill historic health care reform.

Their appeal for 10 bucks is unambiguous: "First, we're going to launch a huge ad campaign to make sure every last Connecticut voter knows that Senator Lieberman is blocking strong reforms. Then, we'll push Senate leaders to strip him of his chairmanship and seniority. Finally, we'll work to defeat him in his next election. We can do this."

MoveOn's appeal starts with a quick review of Lieberman's mad shenanigans,

First, Joe Lieberman helped President Bush invade Iraq, and the Democrats in Washington forgave him. Then, he endorsed John McCain, and they forgave him again. Then, he personally attacked Barack Obama at the Republican National Convention, and still the Democrats forgave him. Now, Joe Lieberman is single handedly gutting health care reform. The time for forgiveness is over. It's time to hold Senator Lieberman accountable.

This has resonated with enough people to make them pitch in almost one million bucks to slow down this supposedly independent Senator who lost his Democratic bid in 2006 and now seems to be representing only his mercurial petty whims instead of the state of Connecticut... which is a solidly blue state. It went 60% for Obama in 2008. Polls in Connecticut show Lieberman is already in trouble. Thirty percent of Lieberman voters in 2006 later said they would not vote for him again, and, in another poll, he trailed one possible Democratic opponent by a whopping 44 points.

Whether it is big buck political donations from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries that has has caused his total flip flop on health care reform, or a bruised ego, is not clear. His steadily building Little Caesar rage from feeling he has been snubbed by his caucus seems to many to be driving his decisions.

While holding Democrats hostage for his crucial 60th vote he seems oblivious to his pariah status and seems willing to possibly kill health care reform before it can finish the long hammering-out process ahead. What a legacy that would be for proud, independent Joe. But he gets his gold plated Congressional health insurance plus a fat annual retirement no matter what. He and his colossal ego could ride off into the sunset with no health care worries and plenty of walking around money, happy to say to hell with America.

It has to be more than inflated chutzpah. Maybe, in his delusional state, he also sees his reelection as a sure thing because he is so right and so loved.

Or maybe he has been watching too many WWII Kamikaze movies.

If you have had enough of Loony Lieberman and want to donate a couple of bucks to the MoveOn campaign, here's the link:

DUMP LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Health Care 'Reform' : Just Say No to Traitor Joe!

Don't Surrender to Senator Joe
Vote "No" on the health care joke

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / December 16, 2009

It looks like the United States Senate is going to cave in and surrender to Joe Lieberman. They first dumped the most important part of health care reform -- the public option. This was the part of the reform bill that would offer inexpensive and decent health care insurance to Americans, and would force the private insurance companies to lower their prices to compete. But Traitor Joe didn't like it, so it's gone.

But that wasn't enough. The Senate then tossed out a compromise idea -- the creation of a private non-profit insurance program that would be overseen by a federal government agency. Although not as good as a true public option, this would have also caused some downward pressure on insurance premiums and saved consumers a ton of money. But Traitor Joe didn't like it, so it's gone.

Still, that wasn't enough. Now the Senate is willing to toss out an expansion of Medicare to those between 55 and 64. At age 55, people are entering the years where they are much more prone to medical problems than younger Americans. This would have guaranteed they would be covered by a government insurance program that has been proven to work efficiently and effectively (just ask someone over 65 if they would give up their Medicare). But Traitor Joe didn't like it, so it's gone.

I'm beginning to think if Lieberman wanted Senate Democrats to kiss his scrawny ass, most of them would line up, get on their knees and pucker up. Are there any real Democrats left? Do any of them have even a remnant of a spine? Where are the progressives who promised us real health care reform?

All we are left with now is a bill that would force ordinary Americans to give the large private insurance companies a gigantic payday. And they would be forced to do it without getting lower costs or better health care. This bill would still leave medical decisions in the hands of insurance companies rather than doctors. Personally, I am appalled.

I think any Senate progressive with a functioning brain and a fully-developed conscience should vote against this travesty of a bill that is empty of any real health care reform. And it looks like Howard Dean agrees with me. He told Vermont Public Radio the following:

This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.

I urge any remaining progressive senators -- don't check your conscience at the door to the Senate chamber. Vote against this bill. Kill it, then start over and do it right.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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Divine Comedy : Joe Lieberman and the Hypocrites

The Hypocrites address Dante, from Canto XXIII of Divine Comedy, Inferno, by Dante Alighieri. Engraving by Gustave Doré from Pantheon Books edition / Wikimedia Commons.
The Eighth Circle of Hell:
Lieberman, Congress and health care reform

Of course, Sen. Lieberman does not stand alone as a hypocrite. In his company are all of those elected representatives in Congress and their families, who receive Federal Employment Health Benefit Programs, the Rolls Royce of health plans.

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / October 31, 2009

Sen. Joe Lieberman's announcement of his complete and absolute opposition to health care for the poorest and sickest of all Americans took me back to when I was trying to understand Dante Alighieri in my early years. I do recall in his Inferno that Dante subdivided Hell into nine circles, the first circle being the widest and progressively the ninth and inner circle being the smallest and reserved for Lucifer.

Last evening I did a bit of research with Sen. Lieberman in mind and found within the eighth circle the hypocrites, and I quote Dante with a minor modification:

Here we see hypocrites, plodding forever around in their circle: And now we see a people decked with paint, who trod their circling away with fear and groan. And slow, slow steps, seemingly subdued and faint. They all wore cloaks, with deep hoods forward over their eyes, and shaped in fashion like the great cowls some monks wear; Outwardly they were gilded dazzling bright, But all within was lead and weighted thereby, an emperors cape would have seemed feather light. O weary mantle for eternity! Once more we turned to the left, and by their side Paced on, intent upon their mournful cry.

It would appear that Joe Lieberman has become the ultimate hypocrite within the modern American political establishment and that takes quite a bit of effort on his part. During the election that introduced Lieberman to most Americans he designated himself as a very "religious" man who didn’t campaign on The Sabbath. Nevertheless, he voted for every war appropriation designated by the Bush Administration, perhaps inspired, in part, by the two billion for each submarine produced in Connecticut and in part by his representation of Israel's Likud Party in The U.S. Senate.

He for all practical purposes defected to the Republican Party and actively supported Sen. John McCain for president. He accepted rehabilitation from a naive Sen. Harry Reid after the election, rejoined the Democratic caucus, and was granted chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee.

Now, after voting for a $1.4 trillion dollar bailout of the insurance giant AIG, it turns out that he thinks the government cannot afford half that amount to provide the American people with decent health care, including health care for the returning veterans’ families, the families of the active military, and the unempowered average American. Once again he plunges a shiv into the back of the Democratic Party and the American people.

Of course, Sen. Lieberman does not stand alone as a hypocrite. In his company are all of those elected representatives in Congress and their families, who receive Federal Employment Health Benefit Programs, the Rolls Royce of health plans. Since this is government insurance, we the tax payers pay 75% of their premiums. Our representatives pay $503 per year for the coverage. Further, if they need an operation they have the option of having it done at a government hospital such as Walter Reed or Bethesda Naval Hospital.

These are the hypocrites who repeat and repeat that socialized medicine is an evil, that the government cannot and should not pay for it. They are protecting us from the government health care which they enjoy. We should also remember that the tax-payer continues to subsidize our elected representatives’ insurance after he/she leaves the congress.

On top of all this we now have Speaker Pelosi introducing health care legislation in the House with a far from "robust" public option. It seems that many of the progressives in the house want payment to physicians to be based on Medicare rates, while the Blue Dogs want these fees to be negotiated. I must admit that I have mixed feelings, as in many geographic areas, Medicare reimbursement is inadequate, and I note that under the Canadian National Health Plan that fees are negotiated yearly at the Provincial level.

It seems to me that the impasse could easily be settled by granting increased fees to primary care physicians -- who are in such short supply -- under the Medicare schedule. As we have noted previously, and as has been underlined by The American College of Physicians, this shortage will not be solved without making the fees of the general practitioner, the internist and for those in internal medicine subspecialties and pediatrics generally on a par with certain of those traditionally overpaid surgical subspecialties.

Any "public option" -- to be effective in reducing insurance costs and providing for the well-being of the public at large -- must provide (1) universal coverage, (2) the ability for any and all citizens to opt for the public plan without restrictions, thus reducing health care costs overall, and (3) must begin to provide coverage at the earliest possible time, and not await 2013, as many Americans will continue to die for lack of health insurance in that interval.

Granted, it will require time to provide a well managed, all inclusive program, but it should be instituted gradually over the next three years to start providing coverage for those without insurance. As Dr. Howard Dean pointed out on MSNBC, it is good politics looking forward to the elections of 2010 and 2012 to make the public aware that the government is exhibiting the ability and compassion to implement the program. As for the proposed right for states to "opt-out,” it is probably harmless to include that within a bill but it appears to be a bit of legislative absurdity.

Yesterday the progressives in Congress met with President Obama and the full context of the discussion has not been made public. The President has been a first class waffler relative to health care reform. It is up to the thinking progressives to keep the pressure on for the next several weeks and to try and offer him guidance. Without his leadership the dream of decent health insurance for all can never be achieved.

We must grant that the President has a full plate with both health care and Afghanastan; however, Mr. Obama is an intelligent human being, and was certainly aware of these problems prior to his election. In my opinion, the well being of the American people takes precedence over the umpiring of tribal feuds and pipe line building in a nation in central Asia that has historically, since the time of Alexander the Great, rejected foreign occupation.

On October 20, Robert Reich wrote on his blog,

Last January, as I understand it, the White House promised Big Pharma, big insurance, and the AMA the moral equivalent of what Joel Halderman allegedly demanded of David Letterman: hush money. The groups agreed to stay silent or even be supportive of health care reform, as long as they were paid off. But now it's time to collect, the bill is larger than the White House expected, and its going to fall like an avalanche on middle class Americans in coming years. That could mean an ugly 2012 election (read Sarah Palin). So the President has to do what Letterman did: refuse to pay.

On October 26 Reuters published an article indicating that our current health care system wastes up to $800 billion per year due to:

1. Unnecessary care such as overuse of antibiotics and lab tests to protect against malpractice exposure makes up to 37% of health care waste or $200 to $300 billion a year.
2. Fraud makes up to 22% of health care waste or up to $200 billion a year in fraudulent Medicare claims, kickbacks for referrals for unnecessary services and other scams.
3. Administrative inefficiency and redundant paper work account for 18% of health care waste.
4. Medical mistakes account for $50 billion to $100 billion in unnecessary spending each year or 11% of the total.
5. Preventable conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes cost $30 billion to $50 billion a year.

The same report indicates that the average U.S. hospital spends one quarter of its budget on billing and administration, nearly twice the average in Canada. American physicians spend nearly eight hours per week on paperwork and employ 1.66 clerical workers per doctor, far more than in Canada. Yet, primary care doctors are lacking, forcing wasteful use of emergency rooms.

Yet the On Line Journal reports that

United Health Care's 155% profits on Medicare Plans ("Medicare Advantage") must be a company record, especially in a down economy, and an embarrassing fact, particularly as the conservatives in the Senate Finance Committee fight to preserve the present payment structure of United Health Care and its fellow insurance companies. Private insurance plans in medicare cost up to 19% more than the cost to care for the same people under the public Medicare program.

In other words the taxpayers lost $2.7 billion in 2005 to private medicare advantage plans and their parent insurance companies. Yet the insurance industry and its prostitutes “keep telling innocent seniors that they will suffer (even more) if they lose their Medicare Advantage Plans.” This is not true. “Medicare Advantage Plans can hurt people with Medicare. Two studies found that people could end up actually paying out-of-pocket costs in a private plan than in straight Medicare.”

Congress, in the interest of preserving Medicare, must act on this issue, and must also redo the Medicare prescription plan, in the interest in saving the Medicare Plan for future generations.

I have previously warned the consumer about the purchase of insurance, medical devices, or pharmaceuticals advertised on TV. It does not require an Einstein to recognize that TV ads cost money, and that the consumer pays in the end. The current edition of Consumer Reports discusses Flomax, the highly advertised drug for an enlarged prostate. In 2008 the manufacturer spent $116 million advertising Flomax and racked up sales of $1.2 billion. Flomax can cost up to $246 monthly to the patient; however, one can obtain a generic equivalent, Doxazosin, for approximately $10 per month.

Always ask your doctor about generic equivalents, which are just as good as name brands, and are equally safe. If your physician refuses to discuss the matter, you should be concerned that he MIGHT be getting a kickback on the brand name version, or at the least is poorly informed. It is easy to look up this information in a book entitled the Physicians' Desk Reference.

Unhappily, true health care reform is in the hands of Congress, and that reminds me of a comment by Mary McCarthy:

The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner's visit to Congress -- these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vestys are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous and slovenly, are spotted with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform.]

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Bill Ayers? McCain Campaign Connected to REAL Terrorists

McCain's terrorist: Eduardo Arocena.Convicted murderer Eddie Arocena, being taken from FBI headquarters. Photo by Marice Cohn / Miami Herald.
'McCain's campaign and advisers find themselves allied with and/or supporting militants who have committed acts that any reasonable observer would define as terrorism'
By A.L. Bardach / October 15, 2008

The campaign of John McCain has made much of Barack Obama's relationship with Weather Underground bomber-turned-university professor Bill Ayers, whom Republicans call an "unrepentant terrorist." Indeed, the Obama-Ayers connection has become a centerpiece of the McCain-Palin campaign. V.P. nominee Sarah Palin mentions Ayers in practically every public appearance, and John McCain has all but promised to bring up Ayers in tonight's debate. [And, indeed he did.]

McCain's campaign, however, has its own questionable connections to terrorists. Since John F. Kennedy's failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Florida's Cuban-Americans have been regarded as a reliable Republican voting block. And from 1960 until Sept. 11, 2001, some exile hard-liners in Miami endorsed a double standard on terrorism in which anti-Castro militants and bombers were judged to be "freedom fighters," regardless of the civilian deaths and collateral damage they caused in Cuba and the United States, as well as elsewhere. While the Cuban-American community has undergone dramatic changes—with the majority now supporting dialogue with Cuba and an end to restrictions on travel and remittances—hard-liners still control the major levers of power in Miami. Such is their clout in turning out reliable voters that McCain dropped his stance of 2000, when he said he would support normalizing relations with Cuba even under Fidel Castro. ("I'd be willing to do the same thing we did with—with Vietnam.") McCain has allied his campaign with the Cuban Liberty Council, an uncompromising anti-Castro group that has all but dictated policy to George W. Bush. Two of the council's most prominent members, media personality Ninoska Perez-Castellon and her husband, Roberto Martin Perez, have been among McCain's most dedicated campaigners and champions in Miami.

As a result, McCain's campaign and advisers find themselves allied with and/or supporting militants who have committed acts that any reasonable observer would define as terrorism. On July 20, while campaigning for McCain in Miami and just prior to speaking at a McCain event, Sen. Joe Lieberman met with the wife of convicted serial bomber Eduardo Arocena and promised to pursue a presidential pardon on his behalf. Arocena is the founder of the notorious Cuban exile militant group Omega 7, renowned for a string of bombings from 1975 to 1983. Arocena was convicted of the 1980 murder of a Cuban diplomat in Manhattan. In 1983, Arocena was arrested and charged with 42 counts pertaining to conspiracy, explosives, firearms, and destruction of foreign government property within the United States. He is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison in Indiana. His targets included:

* Madison Square Garden (he blew up an adjacent store);

* JFK airport (Arocena's group planted a suitcase bomb intended for a TWA flight to Los Angeles—in protest of the airline's flights to Cuba. The plane would have exploded if not for the fact that the bomb went off on the tarmac prior to being loaded);

* Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center (causing damage to three levels of the theater and halting the performance of a music group from Cuba);

*the ticket office of the Soviet airline Aeroflot;

*and a church.

He also attempted to assassinate the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations.

Arocena was also convicted of the 1979 murder of New Jersey resident Eulalio José Negrín. The 37-year-old Negrín, who advocated diplomacy with Cuba, was machine-gunned down as he stepped into his car, dying in the arms of his 13-year-old son.

Nevertheless, Lieberman, who at the time was McCain's first choice for vice president and is said to top McCain's list for secretary of state, was caught on video promising Miriam Arocena he would petition Washington to grant a pardon to her husband. "It's my responsibility; it's my responsibility. I will carry [the pardon request] back. I will carry it back," Lieberman told Arocena just before addressing a group at a McCain event. "I think of you like you were my family. ... I'll bring it back. I'll do my best."

Queried on the matter, a Lieberman spokesman demurred, telling the AP, "Sen. Lieberman does not intervene in criminal proceedings including requests for pardons. The correspondence was merely forwarded without any comment, endorsement or support whatsoever."

Another vocal champion of an Arocena pardon is CLC member Roberto Martin Perez, who narrates a McCain commercial about Castro that has played in South Florida. His wife, radio host Ninoska Perez-Castellon, says that the McCain campaign has queried them about making a television spot as well.

Miami attorney Alfredo Duran, Bay of Pigs veteran and a leader of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, explains the GOP strategy: "They think that the Arocena campaign will energize a certain segment of the ultra-conservative exile community that will deliver for McCain and the Republican Party."

Arocena is not the only militant who's received help from McCain's team. In September, McCain announced he was choosing Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican congressman from Miami, as his senior adviser and spokesman on Latin America. Rep. Diaz-Balart is a fierce hard-liner on Cuba, advocating, at various times, a blockade of the island, even military action if needed, to unseat Fidel Castro (his former uncle, once married to Diaz-Balart's aunt). He, too, has been a supporter of certain kinds of terrorists who have struck on American soil. Since 2000, Diaz-Balart and his colleague Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have lobbied for and helped win the release of several convicted exile terrorists from U.S. prisons. Among the most notorious were Omega 7 members Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel and Virgilio Paz Romero, both convicted for their roles in the 1976 assassination of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt with a car bomb in Washington, D.C. According to four agents I interviewed, the FBI also suspects the pair were involved in other bombings and attacks. (Suarez is known by the nickname "Charco de Sangre"—Pool of Blood.)

Diaz-Balart also pushed for the release of Valentin Hernandez, who gunned down Miami resident and Cuban émigré Luciano Nieves in February 1975 for speaking out in support of a dialogue with Cuba. Nieves was ambushed by Hernandez in a hospital parking lot in Miami after visiting his 11-year-old son. Hernandez also went on to kill a former president of the Bay of Pigs Association in an internecine feud. Hernandez was captured in Puerto Rico in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison. Today, Hernandez is living freely in Florida.

Nor has McCain's senior adviser Diaz-Balart ever wavered in seeking "due process" for legendary bombers and would-be Castro assassins Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both were charged with the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all 73 civilian passengers—the first act of airline terrorism in the Americas. In 2005, when I asked him about those who died—many of them teenage athletes—Bosch responded, "We were at war with Castro, and in war, everything is valid."

After serving nine years, Posada "escaped" from prison in Caracas, Venezuela, thanks to a bribe paid to the warden. Posada gives effusive thanks in his memoir, Los Caminos del Guerrero, to at least two members of the Cuban Liberty Council for their help in resettling him during his early fugitive days. After serving 11 years, Bosch won an acquittal (following death threats to several judges hearing the case). However, hundreds of pages of memorandum of the FBI, CIA, and State Department, released by the National Security Archives, leave no doubt that U.S. authorities fully concurred with Venezuelan, Trinidadian, and Cuban intelligence that the two men had masterminded the airplane bombing.

Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh described Bosch, who spent four years in federal prison for firing a bazooka into a Polish freighter bound for Havana in Miami's harbor, as an "unreformed terrorist" and recommended immediate deportation when he showed up in Miami in 1988. But there were political considerations in Miami. Ros-Lehtinen, then running for Congress and now the Republican leader of the House foreign-affairs committee, lauded Bosch as a hero and a patriot. After she personally lobbied then-President George Bush (with her campaign manager Jeb Bush at a meeting noted in the Miami media), Bush overruled the FBI and the Justice and State departments, and Bosch was granted U.S. residency.

In 1998, I interviewed Luis Posada in Aruba for an investigative series for the New York Times in which he claimed to have orchestrated numerous attacks on both civilian and military targets during his 50-year war to topple Castro. Most notably, Posada took credit for masterminding the 1997 bombings of Cuban hotels that killed an Italian vacationer and wounded 11 others.

Posada made his last failed attempt to eliminate Fidel Castro at the Ibero-America Summit in Panama in November 2000. After his trial and conviction in 2004, Diaz-Balart (along with his brother, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, and Ros-Lehtinen), wrote at least two letters on official U.S. Congress stationery to Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso seeking the release of Posada and his collaborators. "We ask respectfully that you pardon Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Crispin Remon and Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo," went one missive. On Aug. 24, 2004, Posada and his fellow conspirators—all with colorful rap sheets—received a last-minute pardon from the outgoing Moscoso.

Posada's supporters tell me that he had been quietly assured by several Miami exile leaders that he would be allowed to live free in the United States like Bosch. While still a fugitive, Posada slipped into Miami in 2005. But following international outrage over his release, a federal grand jury was impaneled in Newark, N.J., in January 2006 to hear evidence against Posada for the Havana hotel bombings. FBI investigators testified that Posada had smuggled plastic explosives in shampoo bottles and shoes into Cuba a few weeks prior to the bombings. At the cost of millions of dollars, dozens of witnesses have testified to the grand jury over two and a half years. On Sept. 19 and 20, 2007, two witnesses, compelled to turn state's evidence, offered damning evidence implicating Posada and his confederates. (Disclosure: The New York Times and I were subpoenaed in the matter but have not appeared before the grand jury, citing First Amendment protections.)

But election year politics seem to have interfered with the case. One of the attorneys representing Posada's comrades in the case told me that the defendants received target letters last year and were warned by the FBI that they would be indicted by the end of 2007. Now he says it is certain nothing will happen because of the 2008 elections and the damage that could be done to the McCain ticket, the Diaz-Balarts, and Ros-Lehtinen. Another Posada attorney told me that he had been assured that Posada's case "is being handled at the highest levels" of the Justice Department.

In the meantime, Posada has resettled in Miami. In November 2007, the Big Five Club, an elite watering hole for Miami's movers and shakers, hosted an art show and fundraiser to benefit Posada and his comrade-in-arms, Letelier assassin José Dionisio Suárez. On May 2, 2008, there was another gala fundraiser in honor of Luis Posada at the Big Five Club. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen were both invited.

A few months earlier, a relaxed and expansive Posada attended a tribute for a well-known Cuban dissident. Just a few feet away from him, amid the ding of clinking glasses, were Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen. Should McCain-Palin prevail in November, those pesky, pending indictments against Posada are very likely to get tossed.

[Ann Louise Bardach has written the "Interrogations" column for Slate and is the author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington, to be published in April, and Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana.]

Source / Slate

Thanks to Alice Embree / The Rag Blog

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Joe Lieberman : Associated Press Gets One Right!

Joe Lieberman and friend.
This typo tells the tale...
By Greg Sargent / August 19, 2008

Whoopsie! Check out this inadvertent description of Joe Lieberman in an Associated Press story on the Veepstakes...

His top contenders are said to include Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Less traditional choices mentioned include former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, an abortion-rights supporter, and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential prick in 2000 who now is an independent.

A stopped clock is right twice a day and all that...

Source / TPM Election Central

[Note: The link to this AP story tells us it's "no longer available."]

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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