If you'd like to, ahem, make room for all that Thanksgiving deliciousness that's just around the corner, just read this pap from The Wall Street Journal about "The Other Maverick," Joe (Droopy Dawg) Lieberman.

When John McCain ran for president, he positioned himself as "the original maverick." The dissenting votes that so annoyed his fellow Republicans—on tax cuts, campaign-finance reform, offshore drilling—were hailed as evidence of these maverick credentials.

But there may be another man in Washington who better deserves the maverick label. Sen. Joe Lieberman. Once the Democrats' nominee for vice president, today Mr. Lieberman is arguably the most hated man in that party because he is threatening to filibuster the health-care bill.

On NBC's "Meet the Press" this Sunday, Mr. Lieberman was pretty categorical. "If the public option is still in there," he said, "the only resort we have is to say no at the end to voting the bill off the floor."

Okay, I think I've figured out how this works. As the designated Emmanuel Goldstein, Democratic pariah (and media Serious Mavericky Darling), Joe Lieberman takes one for the team, and torpedos the "public option" (whatever tattered remnants of that not-great-anyway idea are left) at the behest of the Powers That Be in the Democratic Party. Obama and his D-(Insurance) pals really, really don't want anything resembling health care reform to pass the Senate or House. But they can't admit that, because they're still pretending to give a sh*t about us little people who haven't bought them off with hundreds of thousands in campaign donations. Hey, Democrats are BETTER than Republicans, right? They wouldn't screw us to the wall without buying us dinner first, right?

In return, Lieberman gets to keep his juicy chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, as well as obsequious media stories like the one I just linked.

Why else would the Dems put up with a disgusting POS like Lieberman? He goes around campaigning for Republicans, committing Dem on Dem violence, and threatening a filibuster of their oh-so-"victorious" health reform bill, and yet, they haven't kicked him to the curb yet. 60 votes are not needed to pass legislation - only 51, and the Republicans can't filibuster forever. So in fact, the Dems really don't need him at all, do they?

This has been another episode of, Democratic Health Care Kabuki, brought to you by the oligarchy/patriarchy at the low low price of, oh, who the hell knows how many trillions of dollars.