Remember back in 2000 when they called Gore/Lieberman Sore/Loserman? They had it right, only the Sore Loserman is Joe himself.

I’ve already asked the fucker the STFU. Now I’m wondering if that’s just not enough.

Joe, in case you haven’t heard, has told Harry Reid (who deserves a whole column to himself, the wuss) that he’ll filibuster the Senate health care reform bill unless the senators take out the part that would allow people 55 and older to buy into Medicare.

Two things about that: 1)  Note the phrase “buy into.” It’s not a giveaway, Joe. 2) That was one of the planks of Gore/Lieberman’s platform.

There just aren’t enough names to call Ol’ Joe. Of course, I was totally surprised when Al Gore picked him as Veep. Maybe if he’d picked somebody more exciting and oh, say, liberal, the 200o vote wouldnta been close enough to steal.

But that’s water under the bridge. Ol’ Joe never seemed to upset about losing that election. But by crackies, he sure was pissed when progressive candidate Ned Lamont whupped his ass in the 2006  Connecticut Democratic Primary. You know the rest of the story. Ol’ Joe labeled himself an Independent and entered the general election, drew all kinda votes from the Republicans who sure as hell didn’t want a true progressive in the Senate, and won his seat back.

Since then, Harry Reid’s been givin’ him every damn thing he wants to keep him in the Democratic fold, but Ol’ Joe, he’s determined to get his revenge on those fucking liberals who didn’t want him around anymore. And he’s determined to kill the one thing liberals really want right now — health care reform.

Never mind that the fucking bill has already been watered down so much as to be more health care deformed than health care reformed. Ol’ Joe ain’t gonna let any kind of progressive though get through.

Fuck him.

Ol’ Joe has had about eight or ten different reasons for opposing health care reform, most of them outright lies. OK, all of them outright lies. Now he says he wants to make sure this new feature doesn’t push Medicare into insolvency, something the Congressional Budget Office is sure to say it won’t do. Ol’ Joe must know that, though, cuz he’s announced his intention to filibuster before the CBO has scored the bill. Nothing like not waiting for what you know will kill your argument.

Here’s Ezra Klein in WaPo:

To put this in context, Lieberman was invited to participate in the process that led to the Medicare buy-in. His opposition would have killed it before liberals invested in the idea. Instead, he skipped the meetings and is forcing liberals to give up yet another compromise. Each time he does that, he increases the chances of the bill’s failure that much more. And if there’s a policy rationale here, it’s not apparent to me, or to others who’ve interviewed him. At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals. That is to say, he seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.

Such a nice guy, that Joe Lieberman.

So yeah, that’s pretty much gonna kill health care reform. And while we can lay plenty of blame on the crazy Republicans, we actually had a chance here and Ol’ Joe fucked it up.

But there’s a little more to this, and Harry Reid plays a key role. Here’s Mustang Bobby:

What’s even more amazing is that the Senate leadership says they are “stunned.” Oh, really? You mean you didn’t get a clue when Joe Lieberman campaigned for John McCain last year and has spent most of the current year carrying water for the GOP, and now you’re “stunned”? If healthcare fails — and without the Medicare buy-in it won’t get past the progressives in the Senate or the House — it won’t be because of the tea-baggers or the scare tactics of the far-right wingnuts. It will be because the leadership of the Democratic party ignored all the warnings of the last three years, and they will have no one to blame but themselves.

I swear, I really don’t get it. I don’t wanna see Democrats acting like Republicans slamming their legislative agenda down everybody’s throats, but come on. There’s no need to roll over and play dead.

Tell you what. I’m gonna put my money on the Mayan calendar. Some folks think that the world is gonna end on December 21, 2012. In the Mayan calendar, that’s the end date for the 13th b’ak’tun, a b’ak’tun being a period of about 394 years, give or take, since creation of the human world, which itself was the end of a 13th b’ak’tun. I’ll save you the mathematical trouble, because the Mayan calendar system is awfully complex — for the Mayans, the human world was created on or about August 11, 3114 BCE. I have no idea how they came to that date, although I’m sure the insane among the Christians would be happy to tell us that’s awfully close to how old they think the world is.

Oddly enough, around that particular time, in, for example, Sumeria, authoritarian kings were pushing early democracies out and priesthoods were becoming a distinct class that determined what was pissing off the gods. Oh, and writing was invented.

Good argument for the beginning of the human world. But I digress.

I’m bettin’ on the Mayan calendar, at least the long count that ends on December 21, 2012, because we’ve pretty much gotten to the point in which we need supernatural intervention. Can’t be any worse than bettin’ on Democrats. And since I don’t buy the inconsistent and contradictory stories of Christians and Jews, I’m going with my peeps, the MesoAmericans.

But no world destruction do I see. I’m holding out for a complete change in consciousness, so that assholes like Ol’ Joe Lieberman (and extremists of all religions) can finally see what utter fools they really are.

Call me crazy if you will. You won’t be the first. But the times, they are a-changin. Hell, Houston just elected a lesbian mayor (that’s Parker on the right and her partner, Kathy Hubbard, on the left).

Hopefully Annise Parker won’t turn out to be the same kind of disappointment our first black president has been so far. But at least she won’t have Joe Lieberman trying to fuck up everything she does because he’s on a personal vendetta.