November 2006: Psychopaths? We Got 'Em!

A faculty wit signs a report, then returns it to me—addressed to the Department's "Oval Office."

Maybe he wanted to suggest my address is exalted—not that our Department administrators are psychopaths.

My read is certainly the latter.

Speaking of the type... the loathsome Joe Lieberman keeps his Senate sinecure. Having been unable to win a primary and unwilling to abide by the results, he's re-elected—by Republicans.

But, they always have been responsible for his career. Some background from Howie Klein—

In 1988 he challenged progressive Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker-- attacking from the right-- and beat him. Lieberman ran a brutal and viciously negative campaign, mocking Weicker personally and even red-baiting him for being soft on Castro (William Buckley formed a PAC to raise money for Lieberman and later Jack Kemp called him "one of us.")

OpEdNews has more on Lieberman's history of Buckley/National Review backing here.

Now Lieberman has a new lease on doing Republican work—still Chairman of the Homeland Security committee, and ready to block a Katrina investigation that he claimed to want, pre-election.

As well as being in place to do as much other sabotage of the public good as he can. Kelly Caldwell—

Where does he find the time?

Not only has Sen. Joe Lieberman been working overtime to smother health reform, he's parked himself squarely in the path of another badly-needed, long-awaited change.

Namely: preventing restoration of FEMA to the previous status it had as an autonomous agency, before it was subsumed and subverted by DHS.

In other news of psychopaths: Bush waits until the day after the election to announce Rumsfeld's resignation—which Rummy submitted just before the vote.

Think Progress updates the post above

—The word "Iraq" doesn't appear in former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation letter. Neither does the word "war."

And Clever Sister forwards this amusing post-midterm piece from the Washington Post: Republicans' Angry Factions Point Fingers At Each Other. Michael Grunwald writes that—

After minutes upon minutes of soul-searching, Republicans are now in recrimination mode. And the GOP's various factions all agree: This wouldn't have happened if the party had listened to us.

And in Grunwald's description, finger-pointers attribute the party's losses to its rejection of "popular causes such as the minimum wage, embryonic stem cell research and lobbying reforms while ignoring health-care issues that did not involve Terri Schiavo." [!]

Along with communiqués addressed to the Oval Office, the month at work opens with a mysterious absence by Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant. As the hours go by without my hearing a word of explanation, I wonder if she has finally been Raptured™ away.

"Medical emergency?" suggests Clever sister.

Perhaps... Could there have been another starfish attack?

The mystery is solved late in the morning, when Dr. G. Zuss asks me to do something. Taking being spoken to as an opening for me to speak, I ask if Jesus' BAA will be in today. She will, is the answer. But sometime later—because, "the dog is delivering."

CS: "Family sick leave, then?"

Jesus' BAA is out of my life for the entire week of Thanksgiving. In the process of straightening out a mess she created, I cc her on an e-mail. Then get her so very professional out-of-office message: the dates she will be away; who to contact for assistance; and—

Have a very blessed Thanksgiving!