After all, what's 43,000 dead Americans every year if Joe Lieberman doesn't feel important?

I'm really getting tired of having this country's well-being held hostage to men's psychological issues. If it isn't chastity and abortion bans advocated by men who can't keep it in their own pants, it's wars started by a president with daddy issues so serious he needs a steamer trunk to hold them all, or one who's so used to trying to tiptoe while straddling two divergent worlds and keep everyone happy that he seems temperamentally unable to achieve his own goals in today's fractious political environment.

And then there's the senior Senator from Connecticut, a pathetic, whiny little man who uses Jewish grievance to further his career; a man so insignificant that if he were not able to hold a Democratic president hostage, he seems to feel he might disappear altogether.

Jon Stewart isn't quite right when he quotes Joe Lieberman using the voice of the cartoon character Droopy Dog. Droopy uses the façade of a nebbish to mask a supremely confident cartoon hero. Joe Lieberman flits around to whomever is willing to stroke his ego and make him feel important:

After he announced his willingness to filibuster health care reform that includes a public option, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) defended his position by arguing that if the public option paid lower reimbursement rates than private insurers, medical providers would shift costs to Americans with private coverage. He also called the proposed plan “a new entitlement program.” As ThinkProgress and others have pointed out, Lieberman either doesn’t understand the details of the public option proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) or he is misrepresenting them. But in a conference call with Connecticut reporters yesterday, Lieberman claimed that it is the more than 60 percent of state residents that back a government-run insurance option that are confused:

What about the more than 60 percent of state residents that back a government-run insurance option, according to a Quinnipiac University poll last month?

Some of those respondents are confused about what such a plan entails, Lieberman said. And he added, “you can’t make a decision like this based on polling,” he said. Ultimately, he he said he has to do “what I think is right and hope in the end the people of Connecticut will respect me for that.”

Describing how his openness to derailing reform affected his role in the health care debate, Lieberman told the reporters, “I feel relevant.”

Got that, Sen. Reid? Lieberman needs to feel "relevant." Are you also aware that such people are a black hole of need into which you can pour committee chairmanships until the cows come home? Such needy people can suck up all the energy you have and still beg for more. Joe Lieberman doesn't want to caucus with you. He wants to be courted. And if the Republicans are offering him candy and flowers, he'll lie down with them. This does NOT mean you should try to one-up the Republicans. Let them deal with this pain sponge and need machine (™ Marc Maron). It's time to jettison this asshole. Let the Republicans filibuster, and let Lieberman filibuster with them. Let them go on national TV and tell the nearly 50 million Americans who don't have health care coverage, and the hundreds of thousands more who are being denied care they're paying for, that THEY're getting health care and no one else matters. That will speak louder than any capitulation to these evil narcissists ever will.