Back 2 Dial-Up

Hello, lovelies. (I brazenly use the plural form here. I hope, or, more accurately, wonder if, there are more than one of you—namely my teacher—reading this.)

I'm plugging through the tiny amount of reading+references that our teacher assigned in preparation for what sounds like a cool class tomorrow. My online sense of time changes when I enter my aunt's apt just outside the city—where I'm staying temporarily whilst sublettors wreak havoc in my midtown apt—with only a dial-up connection. I am on a never-ending quest for free WiFi around the city, but it all goes to, shall we say, pot when I get back up here.

I'm reading that most helpful (to a former CT resident and current New Yorker) timeline generated by Genghis Conn over at Connecticut Local Politics. My mind started free-associating, as it is often wont to do, and I remembered "the kiss"—not Rodin's sculpture, although a bronze rendering immortalizing this bizarre piece of politics would be entertaining and probably ultimately just as bizarre—that greeting given Senator Lieberman by W. on his blushing cheek.

I am sure that my thoughts on this are far from original, but the action clearly evoked The Godfather. A kiss meant death in that film. "The kiss of death." Was this a calculated kiss of death to Lieberman? Did Bush (or the Party) figure that a greeting like that might indicate a political closeness between the Democratic senator and the Bush administration (or the Republican party), thereby offending or putting off his Democratic support base? Does the Bush administration secretly want Lieberman out? Demonstrating he is in the pocket of the Republican power structure on national television might drive voters to support a potential challenger to Lieberman's seat.

Dudes, I could be way off here. It will also betray a certain level of ignorance of what is currently happening on the Hill. I doing my best to learn to ride again.