Quote of the Day “While I understand that Sen. Lieberman has voted with Democrats a majority of the time, his comments and actions have raised serious concerns among many in our caucus.” —Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader in a passionate? rebuke of Joe Lieberman’s role in the recent Presidential campaign
A hot topic of debate and speculation in the news this week centers around what the Senate Democrats should do with Joe Lieberman in light of his support for John McCain’s presidential campaign. Lieberman has a long, reliable history of voting on the progressive side of domestic issues. He has gotten more publicity however for his hawkish war views and support for Bush/Neocon foreign policy positions. In schoolboy terms, what has happened is one crowd’s long-time, close and loyal friend has shamed himself. What’s worse is he did it in furtherance of the goals of the rival crowd, one to which he does not now and never will fit. He doesn’t want to switch cliques and the opposite clique really only wants him around so they can stick it in the eye of their rivals. But his old pals may not want him on their side anymore unless he is sufficiently punished and humbled in retribution for his crimes. There is now much wrangling about which Senatorial chores Lieberman can keep as one of the old gang–whether he gets to keep wearing a uniform and be the school crossing guard or whether he’s relegated to cleaning erasers during P.E.
Since the Dems are having trouble coming up with something appropriate, here’s a few sanctions inspired by those my asshole runnin buddies used on one another through the years. They were harsh enough to punish, yet reasonable enough to keep the offending ARB from bolting for a rival, less suitable crowd. These are all time tested and they all work.
- Call him “King Yak” for the duration of Obama’s term in office.
- Make him run around the Capitol in his underwear on the first night below freezing each year yelling “Obama Is My Daddy” once every 57 58 yards.
- Ban him from getting “shotgun”, even if he calls it first.
- Make him permanent designated driver for Redskins games.
- Next time a Dem gets caught in the sack with someone they shouldn’t, Joe has to explain it to the wife, and defend the dude on Oprah, O’Reilly and Larry King.
- When he’s outside the Senate chamber assign a page to sit in his chair. When Joe gets back the page sits resolutely, repeating, “move your meat, lose your seat.”
- He has to go on the Sunday talk shows during the next round of budget negotiations and declare, “I love pork.”
- When the next election season comes around, Joe has to play the role of Sarah Palin during Obama’s debate prep. Even if she isn’t running.
- At the inauguration parade, Joe has to stand on Pennsylvania Avenue and funnel a six-pack (blank stare). And he better not yak.
Anybody got any other suggestions?
Travellinbaen 
King Yak is a title that must be earned, not doled out as a punishment, so I don’t think that will work.
When the Senators have parties, they could make him be the designated beer retriever.
They could make him go on out of town events with Bill Clinton and try to keep ole’ Bill out of trouble so as not to embarrass Hillary and the Democratic party. He might need some help with this one.
Another suggestion: They could force him to explain this to the voters:
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90-year-old Robert Byrd, a Senator for 50 years, has been replaced by slightly younger 84-year-old Daniel Inouye, a Senator for 45 years, as Democratic Chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
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Now that’s the kind of sweeping and monumental change that the US voters demanded a couple of weeks ago!!!!!
MD, how about a little love for the “I love pork” line. The whole post was written just so I could use that.
As for change, Obama is supposedly planning to immediately rescind Bush’s executive order banning federal research dollars on stem cell research upon taking office. If he does nothing else for four years, we will have had change for the better.
More Wonderful “Change” Described in two Articles:
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Article #1:
Obama supports union organizing
Card-check voting at issue
Donald Lambro (Contact)
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Associated Press
Sen. Barack Obama
Legislation that would make it more difficult for workers to hold a private ballot vote in unionization drives, which critics say would lead to harassment and intimidation, has spurred a pitched battle between powerful labor unions supportive of Sen. Barack Obama and big business in the presidential campaign.
Seen by the AFL-CIO as a way to boost union rolls by hundreds of thousands of new members, the hotly-contested bill has become this year’s No. 1 election issue for organized labor. Mr. Obama promised union bosses that the Employee Free Choice Act would become law in 2009 if he won the presidency.
“We’re ready to play offense for organized labor. It’s time we had a president who didn’t choke saying the word ‘union.’ A president who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best: organize our workers,” Mr. Obama told the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia on April 2.
“I will make it the law of the land when I’m president of the United States,” Mr. Obama told the labor federation.
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Article #2:
Big labor organizations in Washington, D.C., are pushing Congress for passage of the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” (EFCA). This misguided legislation would not provide employees with any kind of “free choice.” Instead, EFCA — also known as “card check” legislation — would take away workers’ rights and bring turmoil to many workplaces.
At the most basic level, EFCA rewrites traditional labor law and takes away a worker’s right to vote by secret ballot in union elections. Today, workers have the right to unionize — and they should be free to choose this path if they feel that the benefits of unionization outweigh the costs.
However, if EFCA becomes law, employees will not be able to make their decisions freely and privately. Instead, unions will be able to have employees vote publicly by “card check” — filling out a union card. An individual’s vote will be known to fellow workers, union organizers, management and other members of the community.
The situation will expose a worker to potential backlash from one side or the other.
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That sounds just wonderful—the whole freedom to vote by secret ballot thing is just silly anyway.
They could just call him “Tom.”
Very nice addition Face.
MD…..?
Although I like Face’s lone suggestion, I have made 3, so Face is still two behind.
FYI: I spoke to Tom yesterday for the first time in a while, and he told me that he has moved into a house on the point in Biloxi, no doubt so that he could easily stumble home from either the Grand or the Palace at 4:00 AM instead of having to drive to North Biloxi and risk getting a DUI, not a bad plan.
I’m a little late to this tarhed, but just came across it by chance when looking for something completely different.As WordPress developers, both themes and plugins, the answer is simple. The code belongs 100% to us unless we say otherwise.Open source makes it a wee bit trickier, however, as we believe in that too! So what we basically tend to do is to not release the code (we don’t have to even if we write the code under GPL) but the client can if they so choose.I don’t believe that all WordPress plugins are GPL either, but that’s down to an interpretation of how the linking works. It’s untested stuff legally, so we can never be sure. So we write code both with and without the GPL license. We give a bit, we get a bit. We do need to pay the rent though, so have to be a little careful /:)Incidentally, in the arts worlds it’s the same the copyright of a photo belongs to the photographer by default unless there’s a contract that’s signed that over to someone else. At least, that’s how it is in the UK.( Read David Coveney’s last blog post..)