As the new year begins The Iconoclast reveals its choices of the BEST and WORST for 2009. Both are U.S. Senators. The BEST (Iconoclast) of 2009 is Sen. Bernie Sanders while the WORST (Icon) is a key destroyer of America, Sen. Joe Lieberman.

The Best & The Worst

As the new year begins The Iconoclast reveals its choices of the BEST and WORST for 2009. Both are U.S. Senators. The BEST (Iconoclast) of 2009 is Sen. Bernie Sanders while the WORST (Icon) is a key destroyer of America, Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Iconoclast Of The Year

Sen. Bernie Sanders

The only person in the U.S. Senate who owns his own soul…

… is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Just ask Al Franken.

Name an issue, and Sen. Sanders has steadfastly stood by the side of the little guy.

We will name two: the financial crisis and health care reform.

 To bring accountability to the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, Sen. Sanders has repeatedly screamed, No! to the renomination of Dr. Ben Bernanke because Dr. Bernanke has demonstrated that he is entirely unfit to be the head of the Fed.

“Perhaps more than anyone else in the world, Chairman Bernanke was in a position to diagnose and correct the impending financial disaster that was taking place right in front of him, said Sen. Sanders.

Dr. Bernanke admitted there was a problem with respect to the $8 trillion housing bubble last year only when the damage was done, like a pyromaniac firefighter admiring his own morbid work.

Yet, Sen. Sanders is the only U.S. senator since to consistently call for Dr. Bernanke’s immediate removal.

“We need a new chairman. We need somebody who is going to pay attention to small- and medium-sized business, somebody who is going to do everything he or she can to grow our economy and create decent paying jobs, somebody who is going to protect consumers against outrageously high interest rates on their credit cards, and somebody who is going to stand up for ordinary people,” Sen. Sanders said.

“I am going to do my best to see that Mr. Bernankes nomination is defeated [next year],” he stressed.

Then, there’s universal health care, an issue where Sen. Sanders also showed true guts this year.

On behalf of the millions of U.S. citizens, Sen. Sanders introduced to the U.S. Senate legislation to implement a single-payer health care finance system in the United States.

This attempt at essentially expanding the federal government’s Medicare program shot ripples through Capitol Hill.

As expected, the hardliners in both parties, especially the Republicans, railroaded his amendment; still, the independent from Vermont got his punches in on the Senate floor.

But, most importantly, Sen. Sanders held out for a more humane health care bill than just a bailout for insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

During this time, he won $10 billion for community health centers across the country to provide primary care to 25 million Americans in 10,000 communities.

“We are talking about a revolution in primary care here,” Sen. Sanders told The Burlington Free Press.

While battling the forces of greed and their demonic casino capitalism ideology, Sen. Sanders has operated without seeking glory, glam, or gizmos.

Just goodwill and grit not only for his own constituency but the entire nation.

For his heroic acts of selflessness this year, he has earned our genuine thanks.

Icon Of The Year

Sen. Joe Lieberman

“What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.” — Adolph Hitler  

Joe Lieberman is the kind of Jew that Hitler had in mind.

Tasteless commentary? Of course. We are the Iconoclast, remember.

But the Führer‘s fury (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrer) was directed by the silly paranoia that Judaism is founded on acquisition of personal wealth and aggrandizement through political machination over national or humanitarian interests.

Much like Hitler himself or the 21st Century Republican Party.*

It’s as though he knew Joe Lieberman.

Why would Lieberman oppose reform of the Health for Wealth status quo?

Could it have anything to do with his wife’s associations in the pharmaceutical industry?

With his own funding from the insurance industry to finance a failing political career reborn as “independent?”

To be sure, the state of Conartistcut is run by the insurance industry, and we would never be so naïve as to suggest that any politician would not be run by the wealth of his constituency.

Such a statesman would be rare as the one who defied the potent Massachusetts medical establishment for decades.

That Lieberman would abandon the national interest in favor of political survival would be forgivable in lesser man.

But let’s consider the rest of the Lieberman licentiousness:

* Could we ever forget Iraq? Lieberman couldn’t. Even when the curtain fell away from the Weapons of Oz, Iraqis, who suffered no less in vicious democracy than vicious dictatorship, continued to bleed from rationalizations that were none of our business. And the Senator from Connecticut continues his Middle East policy rationalizations that smack of thinly disguised Zionism.

* And then there’s that devilish capital gains tax dodge that Liberman loves. All that, and his complaint that health reform is overly expensive, too!

* And who among us could forget the waterboy for the Bush bailout?

 * He supported a presidential candidate who opposes Lieberman’s own support of abortion access, environmental protection and, oh yeah, health industry regulation.

And what has all this gotten Lieberman?

The revulsion of his constituency, a population more than two-thirds supportive of a government-run insurance company, and the eventual loss of his seat, if the polls are to be believed.

It is one thing to manipulate government to favor one’s own political fortunes.

It is ludicrously iconic to do so and lose.

*If there is any doubt of the GOP’s occupation by fascist forces, consider the revelation that the Tea Party Express funneled 64 percent of tea baggers’ contributions into the coffers of Republican operatives Russo, Marsh, and Associates, which originally created the sham PAC.

Russo, Marsh operative Joe Wierzbicki got an additional $16,000, and $8,500 went to partner Sal Russo, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

And what pinko propagandist dug all this up? That would be TPMmuckraker, which also provided us with this, complete with unique spelling and grammar, from “Birther” and dentist and lawyer Orly Taitz, fresh from a failed Obama birth certificate lawsuit, resplendent with accusations of suborning perjury and falsified documents:

Seeing targeted destruction of our economy, our security, dissipation of American jobs, massive corruption in the Government, Congress Department of Justice and Judiciary, it might be time to start rallies and protests using our second amendment right to bear arms and organise (SIC) in militias.

Sieg und Heil.

Tea, anyone?