The Zong

Nancy Pelosi probably hasn’t farted more than five or ten times into her chair as the House Speaker yet, and already we’re hearing some bellyaching from both sides of the aisle that she’s not running things the way they should be run. Several media sources, including the Washington Post, all seem to be running stories about how our new She-Speaker is running things in a bi-coastal fashion, shunning Republicans and moderates from the Confederacy and the Heartland.

Some rank-and-file members see bias toward “bicoastal liberals” in Pelosi’s inner circle — particularly Reps. George Miller (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) — and short shrift given to the views of Midwesterners and more conservative Southern Democrats.

As a typical bi-coastal elitist, I don’t have a huge problem with that, although it’s probably a bad idea in certain conservative districts to brush off newly elected Democrats trying to represent their constituents. Of course, after the last few congressional sessions run by the GOP, it’s rather hilarious to hear stuff like this.

Republicans complained the bills were hammered through after Democrats reneged on a campaign promise to let the opposition offer amendments and help shape legislation.

This, from the party who hijacked congress during a war to try and subvert the judicial branch for the sake of one brain-dead woman’s heartbeat during the Terri Schiavo fiasco, and who spent years suppressing any dissent from the minority party and threatening to change congressional rules to prevent them from blocking the appointment of ultra-conservative judges.

Still, being an autocratic leader out of spite or just for the hell of it only widens the partisan divide that Pelosi has pledged to bridge, and makes more partisan rancor to fuel Joe Lieberman’s ultimate adversary. I think Barney Frank put it best when he said this:

“I think we suffered the last time the Democrats were in power from too much chairman autonomy,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a Pelosi ally and the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “Accusing the speaker of trying to manage public policy is like accusing the fire department of trying to fight fire.”

The nation is learning how we do things in San Francisco: Shout about progressive causes without listening to any responses until the Republicans leave the room in disgust, and then laugh at how cute their statements in the voter guide sound every year. Problem is, I feel like Pelosi is being a bleeding heart on the wrong goddamn issues. Where’s her progressive San Franciscan roots when it comes to the war?

On the war front, two Democratic camps have developed. Liberals and antiwar stalwarts such as Murtha, one of Pelosi’s closest allies, want to aggressively use the power of the purse to affect policy, possibly by denying funds for increased troop strength in Iraq. But some senior Democrats and members of the leadership, such as Emanuel and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), counsel a go-slow approach, in which Democrats start with a nonbinding resolution against the president’s policies, use hearings to build up public support for more dramatic action, and gauge voter feelings before legislative action to stop a military buildup in Iraq.

That’s great. Let’s gauge voter feelings right now!

Mr. Bush’s overall approval rating has fallen to just 28 percent, a new low, while more than twice as many (64 percent) disapprove of the way he’s handling his job.

Two-thirds of Americans remain opposed to the president’s plan for sending more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq — roughly the same number as after Mr. Bush announced the plan. And 72 percent believe he should seek congressional approval for the troop increase.

Here in San Francisco, there are a lot of opinions on stuff, and we mostly disagree on everything, even progressive issues. The one thing that we, and the majority of the country, agree on, is that Bush isn’t getting it done in Iraq, and this new congress needs to do something about it. Watch Madame Speaker tonight as she sits behind the President while he tells us that “the State of the Union is strong”. Then send her an email asking her to do something so that the presidents that hold office after him aren’t lying to us when they say that.

As I’ve said before, I don’t really know much about football, or at least not enough to make any accurate predictions in the playoffs. I will say that, after watching the two championships this weekend, something struck me as vastly different between the teams competing in these games.

Drew Brees, who is a good but not yet a great quarterback, lost to Rex Grossman who is, in my mind, physically and mentally inferior on the field of play. Conversely, Hall-of-Fame archetype Peyton Manning finally found his way past Tom Brady who, rings and supermodels notwithstanding, does not have the athleticism featured by Peyton or a dozen other of his contemporaries (although his nerve is unimpeachable). I happen to think that, had Indy scored with 30 more seconds on the clock, Brady would have pulled it out, but I digress.

My point is that, and this is not to take anything away from Tom Brady or Joe Montana, the Bill Walsh model of designing an offensive and defensive system that transcends any single player or particular talent level is alive and well in the NFL a quarter century after he first coached the 49ers to their first Super Bowl. While Belichick didn’t make it to the big dance this year, they came very close yet again, and after three rings in four years, the common thread between dynasties like those of the Niners, Cowboys and Patriots (not to mention the Yankees and Braves, while I’m at it) is the construction of these systems.

I think it could be argued that the systems developed by Walsh, Belichick, Parcells and maybe now Lovie Smith, could succeed with any number of quality quarterbacks. As Belichick in particular has proven, the system won’t win every game and might find itself overmatched (or disrespected!) more often than not, but will become a consistent contender regardless of injuries or personnel changes. In contrast, a system like the ones employed by the Colts or Packers over the years have been designed specifically to be run by superstar quarterbacks and often only succeed because of matchup problems on offense, and their weaknesses have been exploited time and time again. If the Colts win this year’s Super Bowl, it will be on the back of Peyton Manning, and that’s that.

This is not to say that the Pats or Niners would have had any rings at all without their saintly passing saviors, but you can bet that the Pats would have an easier time getting to the Super Bowl after losing Brady than Indy would losing Manning, and that is why, five years from now, the Colts will look more like the Dolphins of the 80s than the Steelers of the 70s and the Patriots will continue to contend for championships, regardless of who is at the helm. Peyton may very well have his ring this year, but should Rex Grossman, who even during this weekend’s victory looked lost and flustered, find himself hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in two weeks, it is a testament to the system that Lovie Smith has developed, and to the solid play of his entire team.

As the State of the Union approaches, it seems likely that George W. Bush will finally dust off his plan to send America to oil rehab. Evidently, corn ethanol is still the best way out of this mess, and America will sit in rapt attention, I’m sure, as the President finds some way to deflect criticism for his new military “augmentation” by not addressing the pile of dead Iraqi university students in the foyer.

It was an eventful, if not completely tragic weekend on several fronts, and the Bush Administration finds itself on the literal edge of historical oblivion. From a poll in the Washington Post that finds Bush down to 33% in approval ratings. Again:

With a major confrontation between Congress and the president brewing over Iraq, Americans overwhelmingly oppose Bush’s plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to the conflict. By wide margins, they prefer that congressional Democrats, who now hold majorities in both chambers, rather than the president, take the lead in setting the direction for the country.

Iraq dominates the national agenda, with 48 percent of Americans calling the war the single most important issue they want Bush and the Congress to deal with this year. No other issue rises out of single digits. The poll also found that the public trusts congressional Democrats over Bush to deal with the conflict by a margin of 60 percent to 33 percent.

Well, yeah. I’m skeptical that congressional Democrats are going to do much at this point, either, but more about that in a moment. On a day where no less than 100 people were killed in Baghdad in sectarian violence, one wonders if Bush stands by this little section of the speech he made 12 days ago about the New Way Forward in Iraq.

Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences: In earlier operations, Iraqi and American forces cleared many neighborhoods of terrorists and insurgents - but when our forces moved on to other targets, the killers returned. This time, we will have the force levels we need to hold the areas that have been cleared. In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighborhoods - and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated. [I bolded this sentence for dramatic affect]

So I’m sure Prime Minister Maliki is having his tolerance tested right now.

Twin bombings Monday tore through stalls of vendors selling second-hand clothes and DVDs in a busy Baghdad market catering to Shiite Muslims during a religious festival. A market also was attacked north of the capital, and police said nearly 100 people died in the renewed campaign blamed on Sunni Muslim insurgents.

The U.S. military also reported the deaths Sunday of two Marines, raising the two-day death toll to 27 in a particularly bloody weekend for American forces in Iraq. A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier and wounded four others Monday in northern Iraq, it said.

I truly wonder what Maliki is doing behind the scenes to stem this violence. He seems to be severing ties with Moqtada al-Sadr at the behest of just about everyone, but it seems that the civil war in Iraq has grown far beyond his control. For this reason, I found Bush’s statement that Maliki won’t tolerate sectarian interference to be all hat and no cattle.

And the congressional Democrats? They’re already pissing me off. Someone really has to tell me why, at the weakest point in the Bush presidency, with a convincing majority of their constituents in every imaginable poll saying that they oppose any military escalation in Iraq, the best thing they can come up with is a toothless, non-binding resolution stating that they are opposed to the escalation?

The proposed nonbinding resolution is largely symbolic and would have no effect on money for troops. It states that “it is not in the national interest of the United States to deepen its military involvement in Iraq, particularly by escalating the United States military force presence in Iraq.”

Oooooo. That sounds scary.

It would be surprising, but very encouraging, if Ted Kennedy’s bill to limit funding on any further troop deployments without congressional approval was receiving more attention and support, but it seems that the Democrats, who talked a good game before the 2006 election about Iraq, are content to leave the responsibility for our troops to the inside of the Oval Office, where the walls are very thick.

The Final Four of Football is here! The Saints carry the “Team of Destiny” label with them into the NFC Championship game, while the Indianapolis Colts kill live chickens in their locker room hoping to break the Patriot Voodoo what felled them so many times before.

New Orleans @ Chicago
These two teams played some exhausting, exciting football last week. We learned that Rex Grossman doesn’t need to be all that good for Chicago to win, and that New Orleans’ magic was enough to trump the artificial intelligence of Jeff Garcia. Now, head to head, on not-so-balmy Soldier Field, we’ll see if G-Rex will sink his team like everyone is afraid he will, or if the Bears, since opening week a favorite to get to the Super Bowl, will make good on all that fried, cheese-covered promise. Reggie Bush and Deuce McCallister have gotten better (and healthier) as a running back tandem all season. This is where they’ll earn their keep, trying to wear down one of the best defenses in football up front and keeping them honest for when Drew Brees passes the ball.

The Bears, on the other hand, are just waiting for Rex Grossman to prove that he’s the quarterback of the future, and this game will be a pretty good barometer. I don’t think he is, and I think that he’ll fumble, throw or otherwise choke the game away in the 4th quarter. It’ll be a good game to watch, but in the end we’ll be stuck with two more weeks of the sports media talking about what football means to victims of Hurricane Katrina. (Saints 24 - Bears 23)

New England @ Indianapolis
Here we go again. Some asshole decided to favor the Colts in this game, thus allowing the Patriots to use the Rodney Dangerfield Doctrine to charge themselves up before the game. I’m pretty tired of hearing the “No respect” card being played by guys who make millions of dollars to play football, but what I think doesn’t matter. The fact is, Peyton Manning and the Colts pretty much have to respect the Pats for obvious reasons. We’ve seen Manning do some remarkable things during his career, and few can deny that he’s an incredible talent, but picking him over Tom Brady and Bill Belichick in the postseason, even at Indy, is something I’m not willing to do. Ever.

Manning has led better teams than this, and he has played better himself, (He’s thrown 5 interceptions and only one touchdown in these playoffs) and now, unless Adam Vinatieri can start kicking touchdowns, it looks as though the song remains the same. (Pats 31 - Colts 27)

O gentle readers of The Zong! I do so appreciate your comments and loyal subscriptions to my RSS feed. That said, you all should learn to be more like Joe Alterio, who reads everyday and then sends me links to stuff to write about so I don’t have to take time out of my “busy” schedule to look for it myself.

This time around, Joe directed me to a depressing but strikingly illustrative article published yesterday in the New York Times by David Leonhardt. Even though his last name looks like a type-o, I like that he’s trying to remind people that the money we’ve spent on the Iraq War isn’t just coming out of the Bush Twins’ allowance. His estimated 1.2 trillion-dollar price tag for our Mesopotamian adventure, a conservative estimate based upon the work of several reputable economists, could very well have been spent on something other than killing people in a country that never attacked us. He lays some of it out pretty nicely.

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

Well, that’s just great. I realize that we never would have used the money to actually do these things, but they’re more of a reference point for the larger idea here. What will this $1.2 trillion actually end up buying us? It wasn’t all that long ago that we were warned of an imminent threat in Iraq. Most of Congress and a majority of the American people were convinced that going into Iraq was a vital step towards making us safe from terrorists. (Al Gore wasn’t) It could, back then, be argued that money was no object in the face of weapons of mass destruction and a government harboring Al Qaeda within its borders. Setting aside the fact that not a single thing we were told actually turned out to be true, the Bush Administration actually did put a price tag on the war: $50 billion dollars. Here’s a great quote about where that number came from:

Mr. Daniels declined to explain how budget officials had reached the $50 billion to $60 billion range for war costs, or why it was less in current dollars than the 43-day gulf war in 1991. He also declined to specify how much had been budgeted for munitions and troops.

Bush fired the guy who put the number closer to $200 billion, Larry Lindsey.

If Leonhardt’s economists are even in the ballpark, then the $70 trillion or so in direct costs ought to raise some eyebrows, don’t you think? I mean, one thing I know about Congress is that they love having hearings about stuff. Why the hell don’t they have a hearing about where they got their numbers from? I realize that Republicans controlled Congress back then, but did anyone even think to ask how they came to those numbers before they signed off on it?

While we’ve been bitching for years about all the other lies this administration has peddled to us, this unfathomable discrepancy in costs should be something even conservatives can get excited about.

I thought I might take a second to point out that I’m 5-3 in playoff predictions thus far this postseason. I’d like to say I know something about football, but I really don’t. It’s only because I listen to Carmen Policy when he talks about football.

A couple of years ago, I almost got knocked over by a short man in a sweatsuit as he barged out of a busy post office in downtown San Francisco. I was about to cuss him out but he said “Sorry pal” and I looked at him and I literally said “Holy Shit!” out loud. It was Carmen Policy, former President and sometime pariah of the San Francisco 49ers of Hallowed Yesteryear. “You’re Carmen Policy!” I exclaimed.

“Yup,” he said. He looked at me kind of funny, like he was ready to defend himself. A lot of people here think Carmen ran the 49ers into the ground once Eddie DeBartolo went to the Big House, but I think he’s allright. I blame the Feds. And the Yorks.

“Thanks for all those great years,” I said. Then I looked around for something to slit my wrists with because I couldn’t believe I said that.

“Hey,” he said with a melancholy sigh. “It was a great time.”

Then we actually talked for a couple of minutes. He asked me if I still went to games and told me to keep my chin up and I said sorry about the Browns. He didn’t look too happy with that. Then, as I shook his hand and was about to let him get on with his errands, I asked him who he liked in the Super Bowl, and he didn’t even hesitate:

“Never bet against Tom Brady in the postseason, my friend.”

Well, I didn’t, and I won’t. That was a couple of years ago, but I think we’ve seen that Carmen is pretty much right on. Do you remember watching the entire game on Sunday and then not really understanding how New England won that game? I refer you to two drives led by Brady, one at the end of the first half, the other at the end of the second half. It wasn’t pretty by any means, but San Diego learned the hard way that if he gets the ball with the game on the line in the postseason, you’re probably going home for the winter.

With the highest career winning percentage in postseason history by far for ANY quarterback, Brady has shown that, while he isn’t dominant like Elway or perfect like Montana, he just wins goddamned postseason football games. There’s a chance that he won’t win again this week, but are you actually going to bet against him? Carmen’s waiting…

Why, oh why does the Inventor of the Internet tease me with these ridiculous non-denial denials?

Gore has said he hasn’t ruled out making another run for president, but he doesn’t “expect” to launch a campaign. He made the comments during a visit to Australia in September, where he was promoting his film.

It’s campaign season again. Or rather, still. 2008 looms large and is densely loaded with candidates who leave me worried, limp or simply pissed off. Anyone who’s anyone knows I’ve been saying Al Gore is the one candidate that can bring a truly progressive resume back into the White House since before it was cool.

At any rate, The Zong is officially on Gore Watch, if for no other reason than I just don’t want to believe that he won’t run against all these other jokers. For this edition of Gore Watch, we turn to an Op-Ed piece the Boston Globe published Tuesday which, rather vaguely, hints at some inside information from Al’s pals suggesting he’s putting out the “feelers.”

Publicly, Gore hasn’t ruled out running, but neither has he evinced much interest.

But when one friend asked him recently about another campaign, Gore didn’t dismiss the question out of hand. “We’ll see how things go,” he replied.

Another Democratic source says that in recent weeks, the former vice president’s camp has quietly put out feelers to presidential politicos, asking whether they are committed for 2008.

Nice use of the word “evinced,” by the way. Classy.

I don’t really have any inclination to believe that any of this is actually true. Gore’s “camp” could be Tipper just trying to piss off Hillary Clinton. I know that I’m clutching at straws here, Googling Al Gore’s name like he’s my frigging ex-girlfriend, but I’m not the only one. They love him in Boise.

The former vice president and 2000 Democratic presidential candidate is scheduled to speak January 22nd at Boise State University as the keynote speaker for a conference on global warming.

The university started handing out 700 free tickets this morning at 10 a.m. and within 10 minutes, K-T-V-B television reports the tickets were all gone.

I plan on continuing to point out these completely irrelevant snippets of crap as evidence that he might run until I get some actual news from his “camp.” The clock’s ticking, Al. I’ll be watching you.

“Understatement,” might be the word to best describe what the President said today in reference to Saddam Hussein’s execution.

“It basically says to people, `Look, you conducted a trial and gave Saddam justice that he didn’t give to others. But then, when it came to execute him, it looked like it was kind of a revenge killing,’” the president said.

Well, yeah. It looked like one because that’s exactly what it was. It’s fair to say that he’s not the only one who’s noticed this either.

“I am frustrated with the progress,” the president said. “A year ago, I felt pretty good about the situation. I felt like we were achieving our objective, which is a country that can govern, sustain, and defend itself. No question, 2006 was a lousy year for Iraq.”

No question. Lousy year. Bush makes it sound like Iraq went through a couple of breakups or one of its pets died in 2006 instead of (a U.N.-reported) 34,500 civilian casualties. Again, that “W” must stand for Unbelievably Understated. This President was so understated last year, in fact, that he kind of understated the way things were going up until the November elections.

How many American troops and Iraqi civilians have been killed and wounded while Bush stayed the course in an undoubtedly “lousy” year? Would it have made a difference if Donald Rumsfeld had been fired a year ago instead of the day after the midterms? Would there be any change at all in the war strategy had Democrats not gained both houses of Congress in November?

It’s 2007 now, and there are indications that another lousy year is just beginning.

Bombers killed 70 people, many of them young female students, at a Baghdad university on Tuesday, one of the city’s bloodiest days in weeks.

The Shi’a prime minister blamed the latest bloodshed in Baghdad on followers of Saddam Hussein. His fellow Sunni Arabs are angry at the botched execution of two aides on Monday, two weeks after the ousted leader was himself hanged to sectarian taunts from official observers, captured on an illicit video.

A car bomb tore through students gathered outside the Mustansiriya University in central Baghdad, most of them women waiting for vehicles to take them home. A suicide bomber then walked into a crowd at a rear entrance, killing more.

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Last week, I predicted the early exit of the Colts, Cowboys, Giants and Jets. Three out of four ain’t so bad, so I’ll stick my neck out once again for your edification.

Indianapolis @ Baltimore
Why the hell does Baltimore get to have a good football team? Tom Clancy wrote a book where an American city needed to get blown up by a nuclear explosion, and he chose Baltimore. Some would point out it’s proximity to D.C., but I think he just felt that it was the biggest city he could get away with blowing up, because it’s a shithole. With that in mind, I suppose Indianapolis could have been on the short list for fictional vaporization, so let’s call this game the “I’m Glad I Don’t Live Where You Live Bowl.” Indy looked pretty decent last week even though I told them they wouldn’t. They have a fleet-footed, undersized defense built to stay off the field. K.C.’s pop-warner offensive effort made it pretty easy to forget that Peyton threw three picks last week, and Baltimore usually doesn’t squander those kinds of opportunities. Expect at least one defensive score by Baltimore, but they’d better not shut out Peyton, because I never want to see the headline “Quoth the Ravens: Never Score” again. (Ravens 24 - Colts 20)

Philadelphia @ New Orleans
What does one do with two feel good picks like this on the table? I mean, the press this game is getting makes me think that people will start calling me “Katrina” if I pick against the Saints, but on the other hand you’ve gotta love what Jeff Garcia is doing for the confidence of Hispanic albino quarterbacks everywhere (except in Dallas). It’s a tough one, alright, but nobody pays me to sit around and not make predictions all day. The Eagles have, I think, a pretty significant advantage on defense, but they’re going against Drew Brees, who has quietly put up some decidedly stupid numbers this year, including a dramatic comeback against the Eagles earlier in the season. Nevertheless, Jeff Garcia is playing like someone is going to murder him if they lose any more games (he must live in Philadelphia), and his “intangibles” might be the difference in this game. Add in David Akers’ tangible ability to kick field goals, and I think we have a winner. To hell with it: call me Katrina. (Eagles 27 - Saints 24)

Seattle @ Chicago
Man, do I ever long for football in the snow! It’s a good thing that not everyone in the playoffs has a wussy indoor stadium or plays in a state where the thermometers don’t have negative numbers on them. Chicago has been a Super Bowl favorite for the whole season, which means they’re probably not even going to make it there, but Seattle really doesn’t have the juice to beat a good team outside of Qwest Field, and if Rex Grossman can limit his interceptions to three or less, you’re looking at a messy, frostbitten cakewalk. Also, look for Barack Obama to announce his decision to run for president before the NFC Championship. (Bears 28 - Seattle 10)

New England @ San Diego
The San Diego LaDainian Tomlinsons have truly looked like monstrous world beaters this season, fielding an offense comparable to recent juggernauts like the 2004 Colts, the 2004 Eagles, the 2003 Colts, and the 2001 Rams. Their defense is balanced and well-coached, and they have arguably the best player in football in their backfield. However, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that all the above teams, for all their vaunted firepower, ran afoul of the Brady-Bruschi-Belichick Era New England Patriots in the postseason, and the results were all about the same. With the strange voodoo Patriot hexes of Mike Shanahan firmly dispatched by the San Francisco 49ers a few weeks ago, one wonders if there are any coaches left standing in the AFC that can stand up to this fearsome playoff automaton. That said, it gives me pause to pick against these Chargers. They have a different look about them than previous also-rans, and there is always the chance that L.T. will score five touchdowns in one game, but Tom Brady is playing with a goddamn chip on his shoulder right now. He may win another ring this year, but it won’t bring Bridget back. Win one for yourself, Tom Brady! She doesn’t deserve you! (Pats 31 - L.T. 28)

Remember during the President’s big speech how he gave a shout out to good old Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman? That was awesome. As the current chair of your Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security, he is definitely staying the course with his War on Partisan Rancor, and has set himself up to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008 rather nicely. Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute last weekend, he defended Bush’s plan in anticipation of the speech and its backlash.

Even those opposed to the surge, he said, “ought to at least let us try it.”

“The worst that could happen,” he continued, is that this policy could become another partisan flashpoint in Washington.

As Tim Dickinson points out, that’s not really the worst that could happen. And while Joe Lieberman knows plenty about being a partisan flashpoint, his constant references to George W. Bush as a great leader bucking public opinion to do the right thing are undermining any credibility he might have left, and should certainly raise some eyebrows if we’re trusting him to head a legislative committee devoted to protecting our homeland.

Nobody really knows what the “worst that could happen” is, except maybe for some of our generals on the ground, but after reading Lieberman’s statement about Bush’s plan, I’m beginning to see a pattern:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who was assailed for his pro-war views during his fall re-election race, praised President Bush’s plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq and urged his colleagues in Congress to proceed with respectful debate.

“Excessive partisan division and rancor at home only weakens our will to prevail in this war,” Lieberman, I-Conn., said in a statement Wednesday.

I really mean this: I think Joe Lieberman has gone completely fucking crazy. After he lost the primary in Connecticut, something inside him snapped, and he has become a PARTISAN RANCOR KILLING MACHINE! No longer will Joe sit idly by while partisan politics tear this country to shreds, weakening our will while Osama Bin Laden takes up residence in the White House. Instead, he will fight it at every turn!

Even when there isn’t any.

By most accounts, and judging by the chilly reception offered to Robert Gates and Condi Rice by Congress yesterday, there really isn’t a lot of partisan rancor going on when it comes to the President’s New Surge Forward. In fact, reading over the quotes from these decidedly bipartisan grillings, there are a hell of a lot of Republicans who aren’t letting partisan rancor weaken their will to do what’s right.

Rice appeared in the morning before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in the afternoon before the House counterpart. She was grilled sharply by members of both parties.

Not a single member of the Senate panel expressed outright support for the president’s plan. One after another offered skepticism on various points — from the rationale for the war to al-Maliki’s sincerity and resolve, from the need for additional troops to the administration’s ruling out talking to Iran and Syria.

“You’re going to have to do a much better job” explaining the rationale for the war, “and so is the president,” said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio. He said Bush could no longer count on his support for the war.

“I’ve gone along with the president on this and I’ve bought into his dream and at this stage of the game I just don’t think it’s going to happen.”

There’s more of that coming from other Republicans, as well:

“This surge is too late and too little,” Oregon’s Gordon Smith told CNN.

“It perpetuates the status quo.”

Senator Chuck Hagel called it “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it’s carried out.”

And so on. I’ll let you guess what Democrats had to say about it in both houses.

So, either Joe Lieberman is talking about the partisan rancor going on between Connecticut for Lieberman and the Rest of the Country Party, or he has in his mind made yet another new party to be all partisan about, a party that includes the President, McCain and himself along with a few others over at the American Enterprise Institute.

I myself won’t venture to guess, but I’m sure that our homeland will be pretty well defended from all those partisan rancor-driven robots that our enemies are firing up to steal away our Democracy.