No one could have predicted (via):
Step 1: Lieberman boasts that he’ll never go into lobbying, as if he’s above such activities.
Step 2: Lieberman’s chief of staff creates a lobbying operation at a D.C. firm.
Step 3: Lieberman joins his chief of staff at the D.C. firm.
Step 4: Less than a year after leaving the HIll, Lieberman signs on to do “government relations” for a client who needs a lobbyist.
A lot of what’s gone wrong with American politics the last 25 years can be seen in the story of Joe Lieberman. He gets into Congress by running to the right of one of the last of the moderate Republican Senators. Then he wanks about video games and Hollywood and music, becomes a Sunday morning green room fav, and then a disastrously bad VP candidate. Loses a primary to a dirty hippy but prevails in the general because we’re a right-center nation. Heralded in both the Village and the right-wing blogosphere as the last honest man. Now, he’s lobbying for Libyan politicians, after swearing he’d never lobby.
A few years ago, I stopped using the words “whore” and “pimp” to describe political activities because doing so is unfair to people who work in the sex industry.
Cervantes
The only consolation is to imagine how dirty Lieberman must feel in the depths of his vaunted conscience.
Gin & Tonic
@Cervantes: I’ve been ill for the last three days; this is a laugh I needed.
BillinGlendaleCA
We do need a word to describe these folk.
Just think, if things had turned out slightly differently; we could have had the purity of Holy Joe and Harold Ford, Jr in the Senate together.
Cervantes
@Gin & Tonic: You’re welcome.
Get well.
Bill E Pilgrim
I’ve often reminded people that Joe Lieberman not only joined the Republicans in votes, but joined them in filibustering to block votes from even being taken. This goes way back into the period when he was supposedly “with us (Democrats) on everything but the war” as the saying went.
I also remember seeing him accuse Lamont’s campaign of hacking his Web site, even after it had come out definitively that it was their own ineptitude that had made their own servers crash, and it was obvious that he already knew this.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t often come down on the side of screwing around with the Constitution. Amendments need to be for things that truly mean something, not for banning flag-burning, or whatever other shit cause Newt Gingrich or some other asshole feels aggrieved about. But, shit, this shit with senators and congressmen going into lobbying three days after leaving office is poisonous. It reeks of conflict of interest. Nobody can ever really prove that Senator Whoozits voted aye on S. Res. 424 because somebody told him he’d get a million dollars a year at Zkumbaul, Slyme & Sleeze the day he left office, but everybody knows that’s what happened.
Dr. Omed
When I lived in Frederick, Maryland, I was taking my morning walk when I saw a guy on Patrick St. looking slightly lost who was a dead ringer for Lieberman. My first impulse was walk up to the man and kick his ass. Just slug him. I was surprised by my own instant rage. I’m not a violent man. I’m not sure it was him. Probably not. But I’m sorry to this day I didn’t sucker punch the guy just in case.
Scotius
I have to say, this doesn’t really make me think less of him. I already thought of him as loathsome sack of dogshit. It will be interesting to see how many of his former colleagues take his calls now that he doesn’t have a vote in the Senate to use as leverage. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would get along well with others.
fuckwit
@BillinGlendaleCA: How about “corrupt motherfucker”. Or just “crook”.
eemom
I met Lieberman once at a bar mitzvah. It was way back in 1999, before he sucked or ran for VP. Good times.
Scotius
@Bill E Pilgrim:
He was definitely one of the biggest pricks ever to serve in the Senate in either party. Al Gore must shudder sometimes when he remembers what a poor choice of running mate he made.
JoyfulA
Wasn’t his wife a lobbyist the whole time he was in the Senate?
fuckwit
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I thought there were laws in some states (California?) making it illegal for an elected official to lobby for some years after leaving office. Seems like a damn good law to me.
How about a better law: how about we have public financing for campaigns, and use that to negate all this lobbying campaign donation money, which are just bribes. http://publiccampaign.org
At very least, corporations are not people, and that’d help too: http://movetoamend.org
BillinGlendaleCA
@eemom: Before he sucked? Ah, when was that?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Dr. Omed:
Best thing to do would have been to ask him if he was Lieberman, and hit him if you were right.
mdblanche
Well there’s the problem. If you’re going to lie, you need to at least make it a plausible lie.
The Ancient Randonneur
Smells like Joementum to me. BTW nice homage to Lou Reed in the title.
eemom
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Guess I should have said before I knew he sucked. I didn’t pay much mind to politics back then.
SiubhanDuinne
@eemom: Did he suck first and then run for VP, or was it the VP run that brought on the suckitude? I rather liked him in 2000, certainly wasn’t crazy about him, but he seemed like a decent enough guy when Gore selected him. Although now I think about it, he did come across as preachy and holier-than-thou during the Clenis impeachment era — but then so did a lot of other Dems.
LanceThruster
Liar-scum is without honor?
Shocked. Shocked I tell you!
Hazel
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I totally want to read a novel about Zkumbaul, Slyme & Sleeze now.
LanceThruster
@fuckwit:
He’s forever tarnished the good name of Droopy Dog.
gogol's wife
@eemom:
“before he sucked”? Are you kidding? He has always sucked.
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
If you lived in Connecticut, you’d know how deeply cynical his run against Weicker was. He sucked from the word go.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Hazel:
Yes, I was inordinately proud of having come up with those names. They aren’t that great, but I liked them.
gogol's wife
@SiubhanDuinne:
He was the first to stand up and stick the knife into his good friend Bill Clinton, who had campaigned for him. The first.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@gogol’s wife:
Yeah, that was cheesy, but then, Bill Clinton had sex! Outside of wedlock! It was his bounden duty to tell us all how naughty President Clinton was, and how saddened he was. Zkumball…
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife: I didn’t remember that he was the first, just that he was veryfuckingpious in his judgment of the POTUS.
Turgidson
He makes the short list of people who, if I saw them walking toward me on the sidewalk, I might not be able to resist the urge to take a swing at them. Other luminaries on this list include the Zombie-Eyed Granny Starver, GWBush, Cheney, Rummy, Grover Norquist, Eric Cantor. Joementum is the only (kinda) Democrat who definitely makes the list, currently, unless Lanny Davis counts as a Dem.
There’s a certain smug and self-righteous characteristic with these people that sets them apart. There’s plenty of equally reprehensible people, but they don’t spout their poison and lies with the same shit-eating grin or sanctimonious grimace as these bottom-feeders.
Fucking Joementum. Campaigning for Old Man Yelling at Clouds, then threatening to filibuster a fucking idea he had campaigned on less than three years ago (Medicare buy-in for 55+), lying about the reasons why (he said it would increase the deficit…opposite was true per the CBO), and doing it for no other coherent reason other than he’s a goddamn attention whore and still had hurt feefees over his ass getting primaried.
And that only covers the last few years of his uniquely dickish tenure as a Very Serious Senator. Can’t stand that jerk.
SiubhanDuinne
@gogol’s wife:
I think that was 1988. I was just starting a new job with a steep learning curve, and had enough on my plate paying attention to the congressional delegation from the six (seven, actually, back then) states in the Southeast we covered. No room for Connecticut Yankees.
Scotius
@gogol’s wife: He was the first to stick the knife in to a lot of colleagues which is why I think he is in for a surprise when he tries to lobby them. Sort of like the surprise he got when he ran for President in 2004. I see a lot of tying for third place in his lobbying future.
Cervantes
@eemom: He was awful long before 1999.
Cervantes
@eemom: He was awful long before 1999.
Villago Delenda Est
Looserman is a vile sack of pigshit.
It is indeed fortunate for him that there is no Hell.
Sheol, on the other hand, is preparing one of their deluxe suites for him.
Cervantes
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Not inordinately, methinks.
Villago Delenda Est
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Looserman’s sanctimony is just icing on a totally corrupt cake.
Cervantes
@Turgidson: Oliver North.
Villago Delenda Est
@JoyfulA:
Yes, for the vile parasites of the health “insurance” industry.
Scotius
@Turgidson:
You usually see this sort of unanimity among BJ commenters outside of pet posts. Lieberman is that special kind of person who unites just about everyone in hating him. He is the epitome of Backpfeifengesicht.
Turgidson
@Cervantes:
Good choice. I was too young to give a shit about his assholery during Iran Contra, but he definitely fits the profile.
mm
If I remember correctly, William F. Buckley, a Connecticut resident wanted to get rid of Sen. Lowell Weicker (R) because he wasn’t a conservative. Buckley recruited Holy Joe to run as a Democrat against Weicker.
I’m sure that Al Gore picked Lieberman because Lieberman had come out against President Clinton in a Senate speech. I think that Gore thought that he had to show that he didn’t approve of Clinton’s extra curricular sex activities. Lieberman rolled over for Cheney during the vice presidential candidate debate that year.
While Clinton did have bypass surgery during the campaign, he wasn’t being used by Gore as a campaigner.
I think that this running away from Clinton cost him a lot of votes.
By the way I hope that Cory Booker isn’t the next Joe Lieberman. I’m afraid that he’d like that same (D-TV) after his name.
Mike G
Lieberman is more like a “tumor”
MvR
@eemom: There was no time before he sucked when he was in public life. What Doug said about running to the right of a decent Republican is all you need to know, and even before that he was a public scumbag.
MvR
@Mike G: But that’s unfair to cancer.
Bennett
Lieberman’s current big client is a Beverly Hills, CA, homeowners group that is doing everything it can to stop a subway from being built under Beverly Hills. They want no subway stops in or near BH, if it is built. For years they’ve been suing & screwing to stop the subway from bringing the wrong sort of people anywhere near the place.
Wonkette memorably called Lieberman an “alien fecal replicant.”
andy
How time flies. Back when I was stupid I subscribed to the National Review and I remember well William F. Buckley’s endorsement of Leiberman over Lowell Weicker. At the time I was far enough up my own ass to wonder how they could ever do that to a fellow Republican, but Leiberman’s record of destruction in office more than proved he was the man they were looking for.
Goblue72
@Bennett: hell hath no fury like a California NIMBY
ottercliff
I’ll bet Lindsay Graham is measuring for curtains in the office next door.
ottercliff
Loathsome sacks of dogshit make the best lobbyists.
dommyluc
Remember the Friedman Unit? Well, here’s the calculation for the Lieberman Unit:
100 (One-Hundred) Bill Clinton White House intern blowjobs = 1 (One) Lieberman Unit.
Math is fun! And hypocrisy is even funner!
dommyluc
Remember the Friedman Unit? Well, here’s the calculation for the Lieberman Unit:
100 (One-Hundred) Bill Clinton White House intern blowjobs = 1 (One) Lieberman Unit.
Math is fun! And hypocrisy is even funner!
Kal
I am always amazed that anyone will still believe anything a politician promises. Politicians pay back favors but they do not keep promises.
chuck
Y’think we can stop blaming Nader for 2000 now?
Odin
A lying Jew? That’s never happened before . . .