today at gallup

‘jane hamsher’s running out of sheep’

Norbrook’s Blog: …. other people have examined Accountability Now, which Jane and Glenn Greenwald launched with great fanfare a few years ago. Ostensibly it was to recruit progressive candidates, but it seemed to end up putting money into Jane and Glenn’s pockets:

Accountability Now collected $113,695 in donations during 2009, as it reported to the FEC, and spent $169,992 that year on nine consultants … including Hamsher ($24,000) and PAC cofounder Glenn Greenwald ($24,000)….

But it’s not Jane’s only PAC. Although most of the scrutiny has been on Accountability Now, when you look at FDL Action PAC’s FEC summary, you see something very interesting:

Fire Dog Lake: $90,063 …. Commonsense Media: $9,920

Hmm… it looks like there’s about $100K of “synergy” going on ….

…. recently Jane had a little blow-up, right after OFA announced what the President had raised (“a staggering $47 million in the past three months”)….

FDL Action’s fundraising wasn’t quite as good:

No wonder she’s pissed! Apparently all the previous donors have been thoroughly shorn, and new sheep aren’t lining up….

Read the full superb post here

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Norbrook’s post is brilliantly timely in light of Hamsher and Dan Choi’s arrests today outside the White House (along with another 60 or so people who actually do care about the environment – but you won’t hear much about them). They were staging a laudable (in my humble opinion) demonstration urging President Obama to block a proposed pipeline that would bring oil from Canada’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries (the Keystone XL pipeline).

Choi tweeted this yesterday:

Okay, so now that he can’t attack the President any more on gay rights issues – without looking even sillier than usual – he’s discovered (true, somewhat belatedly) that he really, really cares about the planet. And if caring about it so much sees him end up in jail, thereby getting him some attention again (when, really, most had forgotten he existed), then that’s a cross he’d, um, have to bear. Mission accomplished, well done Dan.

Hamsher?

Well, you have to admire her purity on this one. She is so passionate and utterly sincere about the blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline she would never, ever have anything to do with anyone who supported it, right?

June 2011:

Dear friends,

…..Hillary Clinton’s State Department is holding up the Canadian-American Keystone XL pipeline … unnecessarily inhibiting billions in economic activity and hundreds of thousands of jobs from being created, the State Department is preventing a much-needed regional stimulus. Click here to tell the State Department to get out of the way of America’s job creators and issue the Keystone XL pipeline building permit!

Onward,

Grover Norquist

President

Americans for Tax Reform

Ah yes, Hamsher’s old buddy, the ‘tax pledge’ guy who makes Rick Perry seems like Mao Tse Tung, the one she collaborated with in opposition to President Obama (and his then Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel).

What? She can partner the lovely Grover on one issue, it doesn’t mean she agrees with him on everything?

Of course! Just like she can team up with President Obama when … oh, never mind.

Any way, those of you who might suggest that this….

…. might have had something to do with Hamsher’s heartfelt concerns about the Keystone XL pipeline – and you can be sure she lies awake at night worrying about it … even though she has a hard-hitting interview with Cenk Uygur the next day (“Jane, you’re, like, soooooooo great!” “I know Cenk – but you are too!”) …. shame on you.

Yes, she has been jailed, and she may well claim she was waterboarded while she was in there, and that will raise her sinking profile, and may even attract a few more dollars to her struggling PAC, but ….. shame on you.

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PS

Ooooops, $$$$$ are creating a strain between the Firebaggers.

John Aravosis has started selling these t-shirts on his “I HATE OBAMA SO MUCH I CAN’T EVEN FIND THE WORDS ” blog:

….and that’s made Hamsher’s peeps very, very angry:

Oh noes, the Firebaggers are eating each other alive …. after all, there are only so many $$$$ to go around 😉

A second PS:

Credit must go to Aravosis, having picked only white male models for the t-shirts he’s being trying to sell so far…

….. he chose a ‘non-white’ man for his ‘Proud Firebagger’ offering. Jeez, if he added a woman to the line-up we might even accuse him of being inclusive.

Thank you Tien Le for the link to Norbrook’s post 😉

pitiful…

soldoutsandsellouts: Progressive Change Campaign Committee Treasurer Adam Green purchased the URL ColberSuperPAC.com, omitting the t in Stephen Colbert’s name, and then redirected that URL to his own PAC web site in an apparent attempt to steal critical membership and donations away from Colbert’s PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

… Adam Green registered colbersuperpac.com at Godaddy.com, Inc. on July 1, 2011 for one year using the same address he used to register PCCC with the Federal Election Commission. Soon afterward, the URL began redirecting unwitting ABTT supporters to Green’s PCCC PAC website, soliciting memberships and donations intended for ABTT via a splash page similar to the graphic included here….

… According to PCCC’s ‘Statement of Organization’ filed with the Federal Election Commission, the committee was formed on December 19, 2008, the original treasurer was and remains Adam Green…..

Despite PCCC’s brief existence, the committee has already received two letters from the Commission requesting additional information for expenditure reporting discrepancies, both for 2010. In both circumstances, the Commission’s first request appeared to be its final warning including wording to the effect that PCCC must adequately respond by the deadline or risk audit or enforcement actions….

Full post here

Thanks everyone for the link to this story

here we go again….

I posted this (here) the other day (see more at osborneink):

HistoryByDay (March 2010)

That’s right, ‘progressive’ OUTRAGE! peddlers Miss BP (aka the Hamsher creature, Tea Party and Grover Norquist buddy) and Republican/Libertarian Gary Johnson’s Number One fan (aka Greenwald) paid themselves $24,000 each for “strategic consulting” from Accountability Now donations – precisely $24,000 more than they donated in 2008 and 2010 to candidates challenging “corporate-controlled incumbents”, as they promised Accountability Now would do.

And how was most of their money raised? By sending out hysterical emails to their sheeple distorting the words of President Obama, firing up the hate …. and then pleading for donations to fight this dastardly traitor.

Well, well, well …. here we go again:

The Reid Report: Adam Green runs the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, an entity designed to automatically disgorge mass solicitation emails attacking President Obama every time the president speaks, thereby raising copious amounts of cash to … um … what do they do, exactly? Oh, right… to buy a few ads attacking President Obama and the occasional Republican.

Green and his fellow travelers on the anti-Obama left have been spoiling for a fight with the White House on entitlements, which these folks are apparently convinced Barack Obama is about to feed into a giant shredding machine …. but Green’s latest fundraising email, which landed in my in-box just after 7 p.m. on Monday (and was headlined BREAKING, even though the news it refers to happened hours earlier, at 11 a.m.) opens on an exquisitely dishonest note:

BREAKING: Obama outrage.

Joy-Ann,

BREAKING: Today, in a press conference, President Obama came right out and said it: He’s pushing for benefit cuts in important programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

You and 175,000 others boldly pledged that if Obama actually cuts Medicare/Medicaid benefits, you’ll take your money and volunteering elsewhere in 2012.

Green then urges recipients to sign a pledge not to give money to the Obama campaign if he cuts Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security ….. presumably, they should give money to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee instead…

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Ah yes, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee:

Wow, $725.2k of funds raised in 2010 went on “administrative costs”, $503,788 of that on “salaries and benefits” ….. oh, look:

OpenSecrets

Good. Grief.

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Read ExtremeLiberal on this very issue here

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Very interesting post from last year:

Workbench (2010): …. PACs have different policies regarding whether they compensate the people who run the committees. Some don’t accept one cent of donor money and devote it all to their cause, while others pay themselves salaries, travel expenses and office rent. I interviewed Darcy Burner, a former Democratic Congressional candidate from Washington state who runs the not-for-profit Progressive Congress Action Fund, to learn whether it’s common for left-wing PACs to pay themselves. “The bigger PACs require full-time staff to operate — to raise money, to vet candidates [and] to file reports,” she said. “I think the key question would be more one of whether people giving the money understand what it will be used for. … There’s a trust relationship with donors that requires some truth and transparency about how money is going to be used.”

Read the full post here

‘dems dropping bombs on mckinsey’

Greg Sargent: Yet another interesting turn in the case of the mystery health care study … the consulting firm McKinsey and Company recently released a study that – unlike other studies – found that larger numbers of employers plan to drop insurance for workers because of the Affordable Care Act. Despite multiple requests from the White House, Congressional Dems, and news outlets, the company is refusing to release key details about the study’s methodology that would enable us to evaluate its integrity.

…Ironically, the author of an Urban Institute study used by the White House to refute the McKinsey report is none other than McKinsey’s own Bowen Garrett, the chief economist at their Center for U.S. Health System Reform. In his Urban Institute paper, Garrett dismantles “claims that the ACA would cause major declines in [employer-sponsored health insurance],” calling them, “greatly exaggerated.”

Wait, you mean McKinsey published a study claiming 30% of employers will drop employee coverage, in direct contradiction to the expressed position of one of their head health honchos?

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Update from Greg Sargent: Wow. Dems are very quickly ratcheting up the pressure on McKinsey and Company – meaning it’s likely that we’ll see an increase in media scrutiny of the company’s continuing refusal to cough up the methodology of its now-controversial study on the Affordable Care Act.

In a very big development, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus has written a detailed letter spelling out 13 very specific questions about how the study’s methodology was conducted …

I’m also told that three – count ‘em, three – House committees will send a letter today to McKinsey making the same request.

…This constitutes real pressure, and underscores how high the stakes have become for Democrats, now that Republicans have been regularly citing the study as a weapon against the health law.

Read full post here

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Paul Krugman: …. when the McKinsey alleged study made headlines, the firm was pressed to explain how the study was conducted. And it has refused to answer.

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the study was embarrassingly bad – maybe it was a skewed sample, maybe the questions were leading, maybe there was no real data at all. Whatever.

The important thing is that this must not stand. You can’t enter the political debate with strong claims about what the evidence says, then refuse to produce that evidence.

And it’s especially bad when the media give your claims lots of attention, while barely covering the furor over the refusal to explain where those claims come from.

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You can see the original post about the study here

birthers & their photoshopping skills….

Media Matters: Jack Cashill, author of the charmingly insane book Deconstructing Obama, claims to have unearthed yet another shocking bombshell about Barack Obama’s past. According to Cashill’s WorldNetDaily column this morning, this photo of young Barack Obama and his grandparents in New York is a forgery into which Obama has been photoshopped:

Cashill writes: “The bench is real. The grandparents are real. The wall behind them is real. Barack Obama is not. He has been conspicuously photoshopped in. Who did this and why remains as much a mystery as Obama’s extended stay in New York.” He embeds a YouTube video that claims to have uncovered the “real” photo, seen below, in which Obama is nowhere to be seen:

Actually, to say Obama is “nowhere to be seen” isn’t quite accurate, given that the young future president’s right knee is still somehow visible in the “real” photo:

So yeah: Jack Cashill is a clownish buffoon. Be sure to tell that to the hosts of Fox & Friends the next time they have him on national television. Also, drop a line to Andrew Breitbart, who is quite enamored of Cashill’s “convincing work.”

Yep, that’s the new Huffy Post recruit.

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This is pure gold ‘LOL’, thank you!

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Loved this:

Alex Pareene (Salon): So, yes, this is actually just a picture of Barack Obama’s grandparents hanging out in New York, where they did not live and where Obama was attending college, without their grandson, who was I guess secretly in Pakistan, at the time. I think that’s what has been definitively proven here. Obama was being a Marxist Muslim in Pakistan.

But unmentioned by Cashill is the single most insidious part of this deception: While Barack Obama is nowhere to be found in the unretouched version of this photo, his knee is still in between in grandparents.

What was Barack Obama’s knee doing in New York, while the rest of him was in Pakistan, and Indonesia? Dealing drugs? Why are mainstream journalists afraid to ask tough questions about the president’s detachable knee? The people have a right to know!

chump update: his ‘white house con began 24 years ago’

Steve Kornacki: How The Donald discovered that pretending to run for president can be good for business ….

….Paul Riddell from Texas wrote that he agreed Trump’s “campaign” is a publicity stunt, not just because he did the same thing back in 2000, but because he also did it in the 1988 cycle … it turns out it’s true: The Trumpster’s first fake presidential campaign actually took place 24 years ago…

….he was handed a deal to write the “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” Publication was set for November 1987 … And wouldn’t you know it, a few months before the book’s release, stories began appearing that Trump – seemingly out of nowhere – might jump into the 1988 presidential race as a Republican … “Anyone would be honored to hear this,” he said. Then he swung into action, taking out ads in major newspapers addressing topics ranging from the deficit to nuclear weaponry to Central America. And he scheduled a speech in New Hampshire…

….with his money and bluster, Trump was portrayed as a potential wild card. He denied that he was running – always leaving enough wiggle room to keep the media playing along….Not long after the NH speech, “The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores. It was a runaway hit. And with that, the trips to New Hampshire and the flirtations with the ’88 race stopped. He’d already accomplished his goal: enhancing the Trump brand….

12 years later, with another book to promote, he did it all over again (see here). And now, 12 years after that, he’s back again. (There’s no book for Trump to promote this time, but there is his C-list celebrity train wreck on NBC, which (conveniently enough) premiered just as the Trump for President chatter intensified).

More here

‘subtropical wisconsin’

Paul Krugman: Fox News shows us film of violent protests in Wisconsin. Except notice the people in shirtsleeves and the palm trees in the background.

(The film showed, in fact, footage of a “solidarity” protest in Sacramento)

ha, the nutjobs dug this ‘photo’ out again today

They’re original, aren’t they? Although not as original as the non-photoshopped version of the pic – which was darkened (oh yes), flipped and cigarette-ized:

Museum of Hoaxes: In early 2008 the top photo began circulating online, showing Obama with a cigarette in his mouth. It is not real. The original photo (bottom) was taken by Kwame Ross on Aug. 3, 2004 while then-State Sen. Obama met with constituents at the University of Illinois while campaigning to become a U.S. Senator. An unknown hoaxer digitally added the cigarette into the photo.

Oh dear.

hey people

I’m getting endlessly spammed today by someone using this web address:

theobamadiary.blogger.com

It appears not to exist, but just to absolutely clarify: it’s not another address for this blog, and never will be.

theobamadiary.com is this blog’s permanent home

Thank you!