sockets and classes

[TheDustbustr]

Having quite a bit of trouble with sockets and classes lately.  I am writing an
IRC bot, heres the trouble code:

#BEGIN CODE BLOCK
import socket, string, sys, errno, thread
HOST = 'liberty.nj.us.dal.net'
PORT = 7000
NICK='Dustin2'
REAL='Ima Bot'
QUITMSG='Bye'
IDENT='hacker'

class Irc:
    def __init__(self, host, port):
        self.host = host
        self.port = port

    def connect(self):
        print 'Connecting to %s:%s' % (self.host, self.port)
        self.sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
        self.sock.connect((self.host, self.port))

    def sendcmd(self, cmd):
        self.sock.send(cmd)

irc=Irc(HOST, PORT)
irc.connect()

print "Sending USER"
irc.sendcmd('USER %s localhost localhost :%s\n' % (IDENT, REAL))
print "Sending NICK"
irc.sendcmd('NICK %s\n' % NICK)
print "Sending JOIN"
irc.sendcmd('JOIN #Dustin1')
#END CODE BLOCK

I don't get error messages while executing irc.sendcmd(), but it doesnt work. 
I should recieve a response fromt he server after sending USER and NICK, then
another response after sending JOIN.  But, I get nothing.  Whats up!?
PS:  This is my first attempt to program using classes, and perhaps I'm not
doing it right?

Thanks, Dustin