Blue America Welcomes Two Old Friends Today: Joe Sestak And Ned Lamont

Yesterday Arlen Specter was back at his old media home, Fox News, singing a new tune, dancing the Lieberman shuffle, calling the GOP "a party of obstructionism." Well, he's got that right; they are. And until consistent polling showed that a right-wing extremist, Club For Growth head Pat Toomey, would kick his ass from Chester to Erie and from Waynesville to Carbondale in the Republican primary, Specter was very much a part of that obstructionist machine. Staring into the eyes of political mortality, Specter cut a deal with the White House to jump the fence and "become" a Democrat. He made the purely opportunistic switch on April 28. And here he was two weeks later on Meet The Press letting Pennsylvania voters know exactly what kind of a "Democrat" he would be:



Today he was calling his old colleagues obstructionists on the exact same issue for doing precisely what he was doing, although he has also bragged about how he will also vote with Republicans against Employees Free Choice. (The only difference is that he takes even more in thinly-veiled bribes from the Medical-Industrial Complex--$4,266,393, the most of any member of Congress who didn't run for president-- and Big Insurance--$1,058,655-- than most of them do.) Oh... and there's one more difference: Admiral Joe Sestak. Joe Sestak's constant pressure on behalf of working families has pushed Specter away from his unswerving support for his corporate donors. Petrified of being defeated in the Democratic primary, Specter sounds like he's almost a Democrat.

It was in the spring of 2006 that Blue America first started following Admiral Sestak as he sought, successfully, to dislodge another corrupt Republican barnacle obstructing progress in Washington, Curt Weldon. He was one of the first candidates our PAC ever endorsed and we have been immensely impressed by something that has distingusihed Rep. Sestak from almost all the other members of Congress we've worked with. He is a critical thinker who seems to relish a debate of ideas. We don't always agree on every single issue but he never gets all brittle and uptight when challenged and he is always eager for input and eager to go through the thought processes that led him to make a decision. If there's one thing I've learned since starting Blue America, it's that no one is buying a member of Congress with an endorsement and no member of Congress will agree with you on every single vote. (Barney Frank once famously said even you wouldn't agree with you on every single vote.) What we do look for is someone with a sterling character who is open-minded, courageous and with inherently progressive sympathies. That's why we've continued to support Joe Sestak and why we asked him to come over to Crooks and Liars today for a live chat. He'll be joining us this afternoon at 3pm (PT), 6pm back in Pennsylvania. And he's bringing along another ole Blue America friend, Ned Lamont.

When I spoke to Rep. Sestak on the phone last week about the health care debate, he was very forceful. "I'm going to have a very difficult time if I'm asked to vote for a bill that doesn't have a public option," he began. "I support a public option so that individuals are no longer stuck in insurance markets with no choices and no competition to bring down costs... I want to end unfair rationing by insurance company executives, like the small business owner who came into my District office because to complain about not being able to purchase insurance for herself or her employees because she had ovarian cancer ten years ago... As vice-chairman of the small business committee, I understand the need to reduce health care costs for small businesses. Only 62% of all small firms (less than 200 employees) offer health insurance, as compared to 99% of large firms. When they do offer insurance, it costs roughly 18% more than for larger employers."

Specter, on the other hand, has been all over the map on health care, just like he's been on every other contentious issue, especially when it pits his constituents against his corporate donors. In March right-wing extremist Rick Santorum wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer that Specter is also fighting President Obama’s bid for more government-run health care. The senator’s conference room still features his famous Rube Goldberg chart, which contributed to the collapse of Clinton-care in 1994.” Quite different from the way Snarlin' Arlen is trying to portray himself just half a year later.

•The Real Arlen Specter voted for billions of dollars in cuts from the budgets of Medicare and Medicaid [2005 Senate Vote #114, 4/28/2005; 2005 Senate Vote #363, 12/21/2005]

•The Real Arlen Specter voted to cut Medicare by $270 billion and Medicaid by $182 billion in a single bill [HR 2491, 10/28/95, #556]

•The Real Arlen Specter cast the deciding vote to decrease spending on Medicare and Medicaid in order to provide tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% of Americans [S 1932, 12/21/05]

•The Real Arlen Specter voted to pay for President Bush’s tax cuts with $69 billion from the Medicare Trust Fund [H Con Res 83, 04/05/01, #79]

•The Real Arlen Specter voted against permitting negotiation with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs covered under Medicare [S Amdt 214 to S Con Res 18, 3/17/2005].

•The Real Arlen Specter voted against increasing its funding for SCHIP [2007 Senate Vote #292, 8/1/2007]

•The Real Arlen Specter voted against expanding SCHIP to include low-income pregnant women [S Amdt 258, 3/11/03]

•The Real Arlen Specter voted to oppose fully funding SCHIP and instead supported President Bush’s tax cuts to the rich, 53% of which went to the richest 1% of Americans [2005 Senate Vote #337, 11/17/2005].

If you'd like to sign up as a volunteer or donate to Joe Sestak's election fund, you can do it on his website

UPDATE: Obama's Got A Problem

Howard Fineman at Newsweek puts Obama's Pennsylvania dilemma into perspective:

arack Obama and Ed Rendell were delighted when they convinced Sen. Arlen Specter to switch parties earlier this year. But now that coup falls into the category of "be careful what you wish for," because the president and the governor of Pennyslvania have a problem on their hands: Arlen Specter. Here's the problem: Specter is up for re-election next year, and he was promised the full campaign backing of Obama and Rendell-- not just in the general election but in the primary next May, if there was one. Well, there is one, and it is shaping up as a fierce one, against Rep. Joe Sestak, who represents the Philly suburbs. Specter, a notoriously tough and nasty campaigner, will expect his two big backers to support him to the hilt. And Specter, a 79-year-old cancer survivor with enough fortitude for the three of them, has leverage: he's the "60th vote" in the Senate. Read one way, Specter has no choice but to support Obama down the line; read another, Specter has the power, should things get ugly, to snarl the president's legislative agenda.

We haven't run many NRSC ads but this one makes too much sense to pass up:

From the DWT Least Surprising News of the Day Department: Say, wasn't that somethin' about that Lamont fella screwin' up Joe Lieberman's website?

"On April 10, The New York Times also reported that, according to the FBI email obtained by The Advocate, 'it was not angry bloggers or Mr. Lamont's insurgent campaign workers who rendered the site inaccessible, but sheer technological ineptitude.' . . .

"Despite having reported the August 2006 allegation by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's re-election campaign that supporters of Ned Lamont, then his rival in the Democratic Senate primary, had "hacked" Lieberman's campaign website, numerous media outlets--including ABC, CNN, and CBS--have yet to report that an FBI investigation reportedly concluded before the November 2006 general election that there was 'no evidence of (an) attack.'"

--from Media Matters' new report on the "story of the story" of the crashing of the Lieberman campaign website in 2006, and the aftermath this month

I assume by now everyone who's found his/her way to DWT has heard the much-belated sequel to the 2006 campaign "story" of how those left-wing crazies of Ned Lamont's insurgent Connecticut Senate campaign nefariously conspired to crash the Lieberman campaign's website. The sequel, only too predictably, was that it was like the outgoing Clinton staffers' trashing of the White House as they cleared out in January 2001: It never happened.

Of course the Republicans who made up the stories about the White House vandalism were just plain flat-out lying. Imagine that! The Bush regime began, at its very instigation, with a complete, flagrant, malicious fabrication, which was never retracted, accommodated, or otherwise amended as the evidence slowly seeped out that it was all Republican lies. At least in the case of the crashed Lieberman website, the senator and his media lackey the Abominable Gerstein [above] could claim to have been misled by others, and so they continued to claim when it finally came out recently that the FBI had investigated promptly and quickly reported back to the Lieberman campaign that it was all untrue, the whole story about the demons of the Lamont campaign doing them dirt.

In fact, the vaunted Lieberman website crashed of its own lack of weight--you get the impression that it wasn't much more than a few spare parts from somebody's basement held together with duct tape and spit. Then, within a few days we learned that not only did the Liebermaniacs almost immediately know that everything they had accused the Lamont campaign of, with such certainty, was a total fabrication, but that the Democratic state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, and the Republican U.S. attorney, Kevin O'Connor, had this information and seem to have erected an impenetrable public stonewall, which kept the facts of the matter secret and allowed the Lamont campaign to suffer continuing contumely from its already-disproved bad behavior.

Even now, not surprisingly, Holy Joe and the Abominable Gerstein bat their eyes demurely and blame it all on their wicked and deceitful computer guy, who dagnab it told them it was all the Lamont meanies' fault. And then they have the world-class chutzpah to declare "case closed." Without troubling to explain how it happened that they never got around to publicly correcting the supposedly inadvertent lies they had spread so feverishly.

Certainly you would think that the most rudimentary honest and decency require, before they go talking about any cases being closed, that they offer a public explanation and apology--if only for the inadvertent error of their accusations. It is, after all, quite possible that this lie made the difference between Holy Joe slithering back into the Senate versus shuffling off, with Mrs. Holy Joe, to full-time, on-the-books employment with their K Street masters.

What? You think His Holiness's lie about opposing the war in Iraq was the lie that got him reelected? Or the lie that he would vote as a Democrat? OK, you could be right. Considering that pretty the Lieberman campaign was pretty much all lies all the time, it's hard to know without some good-quality research the relative importance of the individual lies.

Still, don't the rules say that when you're caught in a lie, you've got to acknowledge it and apologize, however quietly and insincerely, before you can blithely move on? Apparently not in the "Connecticut for Lieberman" inner sanctum.

Nor, apparently, among the media puppets who stoogefully reported the Lieberman campaign accusations. Now those meanies at Media Matters, with their tiresome fetish for facts have investigated and found that by and large the media that reported the Lieberman accusations have similarly found no need to set the record straight, one notably honorable exception being Keith Olbermann on Countdown.

Some of the detail in the Media Matters report is staggering. I encourage you to let your eyes wander through it:

Despite having reported the August 2006 allegation by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's re-election campaign that supporters of Ned Lamont, then his rival in the Democratic Senate primary, had "hacked" Lieberman's campaign website, numerous media outlets--including ABC, CNN, and CBS--have yet to report that an FBI investigation reportedly concluded before the November 2006 general election that there was "no evidence of (an) attack." To the contrary, according to an April 9 article in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut, an October 25, 2006, FBI email indicated that the FBI had found Lieberman's website "crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary." Thus, despite coverage of the Lieberman campaign's allegations against the Lamont campaign, ABC, CNN, and CBS have yet to report that the FBI not only exonerated the Lamont campaign, but that it was reported this month that the FBI concluded the website crash was the fault of the Lieberman campaign itself.

CNN reported the Lieberman campaign's allegations repeatedly on August 8, 2006, and a total of nine times from August 8, 2006, to September 8, 2006. As late as February 23 of this year, CNN correspondent Josh Levs reported on CNN Newsroom that "back in 2006, Joe Lieberman's campaign website went down. You remember this campaign. It was a big deal, him against Ned Lamont. Well, at the very end of his campaign, his site just pretty much disappeared, and his campaign is convinced it was an attack."

On the August 9, 2006, edition of ABC's Good Morning America, senior national correspondent Jake Tapper reported: "Lieberman's campaign complained to law enforcement that its website was hacked yesterday by devious anti-Lieberman forces. Lamont said he knew nothing about the hacking. But the incident was symbolic of the tornado of anti-war liberal Internet writers, called bloggers, that Lieberman faced." On the August 8, 2006, broadcast of the CBS Evening News, then-correspondent Trish Regan reported that Lieberman supporters were "nervous not only because of this race, but also because Lieberman's campaign website was hacked into and shut down today. They're pointing the finger at the Lamont camp."

A search conducted by Media Matters for America on April 29 turned up no instances of CNN, ABC News, or CBS News programs reporting on the FBI's reported findings as of 11:59 pm ET on April 28. By contrast, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who reported the Lieberman campaign's allegations on the August 8, 2006, edition of Countdown, covered the reported results of the FBI investigation on April 9, 2008.

Lieberman's campaign website went down on August 7, 2006, the day before the Democratic primary. Quoting from the October 25, 2006, FBI email it obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, The Advocate reported:

A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.

Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.

"The server that hosted the joe2006.com website failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.

A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states.

"New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.

[...]

The Lieberman campaign alleged it was the target of a "denial of service attack," which can involve bombarding a Web site with external communications to slow it or render it useless.

"Our Web site consultant assured us in the strongest terms possible that we had been attacked," former Lieberman campaign spokesman Dan Gerstein said in December 2006.

According to the FBI memo, the site crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary.

"The system administrator misinterpreted the root cause," the memo stated. "The system administrator finally declared the server was being attacked and the Lieberman campaign accused the Ned Lamont campaign. The news reported this on Aug. 8, 2006, causing additional Web traffic to visit the site. The additional Web traffic then overwhelmed the Web server. ... Web traffic pattern analysis reports and Web logging that was available did not demonstrate traffic that was indicative of a denial of service attack."

On April 10, The New York Times also reported that, according to the FBI email obtained by The Advocate, "it was not angry bloggers or Mr. Lamont's insurgent campaign workers who rendered the site inaccessible, but sheer technological ineptitude." The April 9 Advocate report was also published in The Greenwich Time; both newspapers are owned by Gannett Co.

After losing the Democratic primary to Lamont, Lieberman ran for re-election to the Senate as an independent. Shortly after Lieberman defeated Lamont in the November 2006 general election, The Advocate reported that the U.S. attorney's office and state attorney general in Connecticut had "cleared" the Lamont campaign and its supporters of any wrongdoing. ABC, CNN, and CBS ignored that report as well. From a December 20, 2006, article in The Advocate:

The U.S. attorney's office and state attorney general have cleared former U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont and his supporters of any role in the crash of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's campaign Web site hours before last summer's Democratic primary.

"The investigation has revealed no evidence the problems the Web site experienced were the result of criminal conduct," said Tom Carson, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor.

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal confirmed the joint investigation "found no evidence of tampering or sabotage warranting civil action by my office." Both men declined to provide additional information, such as what might have happened to the site.

According to an April 22, 2008, Advocate article, the office of state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said it "never saw or read the [October 25, 2006] FBI e-mail until its contents were reported by The Advocate" on April 9.

"Even when we work cooperatively, the FBI never shares such internal documents with my office, a practice and policy we respect given our very different roles and responsibilities," Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal, a Democrat, said his investigation into the joe2006.com crash "was active and ongoing" until December 2006.

"Throughout the investigation there were discussions between my office and the U.S. attorney's office regarding the direction of the federal investigation but not any conclusion until after the election," Blumenthal said. "To have made any premature public predictions before our investigation ended... would have been irresponsible and improper."

Thomas Carson, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney, said in a statement that the office updated the Lieberman campaign and Blumenthal on the investigation in late October 2006.

"In accordance with our usual practice ... the Lieberman campaign, as the alleged victim, and the office of attorney general, which had been conducting a contemporaneous investigation ... were provided with limited information," Carson said. "The investigation was administratively closed several weeks later."

Like the December 2006 and April 9 articles before it, the April 22 Advocate report has also been ignored by the major media outlets mentioned above that covered Lieberman's allegations against Lamont and his supporters.

So, in addition to the need for some public acknowledgment by the sleazoids of the Lieberman campaign, there is rather urgent need for coming clean on the part of Attorney General Blumenthal, perhaps with a friendly jog from U.S. Attorney O'Connor.

But then, what really is the point? Most of the media who were so eager to pass on the bogus story seem eerily uninterested in setting the record straight. Maybe the solution would be for Senator Lieberman to do the honorable thing and resign his Senate seat. He could do so with clean conscience, knowing that he would be replaced, not by the man who would have been elected to that Senate seat in an honest race in 2006, but by an appointee of Connecticut's Republican governor, Jodi Rell--in other words, a Republican like himself.

Well, we hope not quite like himself. We'd like to think that even Connecticut Republicans have higher standards than that.

#

Apparently, being "Holy Joe" Lieberman means you can say any fool thing you feel like, anytime, and it doesn't matter that it's all on videotape

Nobody likes an "I told you so"-er, but at a time when truth is at a premium, and memory all but forgotten, three cheers to Ned Lamont for pointing out one obvious problem with His Holiness Sen. Joe Lieberman's endorsement of conservative Republican John McCain for president, in this statement he issued today:

During our debate last year, Senator Lieberman intoned that he wanted to “elect a Democratic President in 2008,” and that my election would “frustrate and defeat our hope of doing that.” With his endorsement of John McCain today, it is now clear that Joe Lieberman is the one working to defeat our hopes.

Last year, Senator Lieberman pleaded with voters to consider his full throated support for the invasion of Iraq as merely a “single issue” in the context of an otherwise progressive agenda. His endorsement of Senator McCain reminds us that the war in Iraq is actually Lieberman’s predominant issue, trumping all else--or maybe he is looking forward to joining Sen. McCain in a duet rendition of “Bomb, Bomb, Iran.”

A McCain presidency would make privatizing social security more likely, investing in our middle class less likely, and tipping the balance of the Supreme Court for decades a near-certainty. The court is one vote away from overturning Roe v. Wade and further expanding the power of the Presidency at the expense of our civil liberties and constitutional freedoms. It is ironic that Lieberman’s fellow Connecticut senator, Chris Dodd, is today courageously leading the congressional charge against illegal wiretaps, not to mention bringing America’s combat role in the Bush-McCain-Lieberman war to an end.

With voters just weeks away from making their first decisions, Democrats are lucky to have many extraordinary candidates running for President. I am disappointed that Senator Lieberman does not feel the same way.

Frankly, Ned, we couldn't have said it better ourselves. And to think, if Holy Joe hadn't spent the whole Senate campaign lying his head off, this voice of sanity would be speaking to us from the U.S. Senate. What a change from the war-mongering right-wing pandering and lies we hear instead from the thug who has truly earned the monker Shame of the Nutmeg State.

#

SO WHILE LIEBERMAN IS NOW CAMPAIGNING FOR REPUBLICAN SENATORS, NED LAMONT IS CAMPAIGNING FOR DEMOCRATS. SCHUMER, YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

Great news today: Maine Congressman Tom Allen just declared he's running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Bush Regime rubber stamper Susan Collins. About a month ago one of the Bush Regime's most dogged Senate allies, Joe Lieberman, attempted to scare Allen off by announcing that he would be supporting Collins. Today's Hartford Courant published a story about a real Connecticut Democrat, Ned Lamont, who plans to work hard to help people understand the difference between a Bush supporter like Collins and a mainstream progressive like Tom Allen. Please compared their voting records: Congressman Allen's and Collins' nightmarish endorsement of the Bush-Cheney agenda. It's very clear why Lieberman supports her and Lamont is joining John Kerry to support Tom Allen.

In fact, Lamont and Kerry will be working together on several senatorial campaigns. Kerry was one of the few Democrats to endorse and work for Lamont after Connecticut Democrats gave Lieberman the boot. While Bill Clinton, Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid joined Cheney, Rove and Bush to empower and enable Lieberman, Kerry fought for Lamont and for Connecticut Democrats. "Lamont is now returning the favor. He and the Massachusetts Democrat are teaming up to target Republican senators who they say are blocking efforts to end the Iraq war."


Ned is joining Senator Kerry's effort to "defeat four GOP senators up for re-election in 2008. The pair is targeting Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Norm Coleman of Minnesota." As Kerry points out, these four are "Roadblock Republicans." Every dead American and every dead Iraqi should be on the consciences as they-- along with Lieberman and most other Republicans-- consistently block efforts of Democrats to end the Bush Regime's insane and hopeless policies in Iraq.

JOE SHOULD GO-- NED LAMONT'S FIRST FUND-RAISER

I just got back from meeting Ned Lamont. I went because I dislike everything about Lieberman and have since I first heard about him as a sleazy, right wing local pol in Connecticut, long before he became part of a national or international nightmare. I was so sure I was going to be unimpressed with Lamont that I didn't even bother to bring my checkbook to this-- his very first-- fund-raiser. I was so completely impressed that the first thing I did when I got home was rush to the computer to add him to the fledgling DWT ACT BLUE page. (Alas he's not even on with them yet but I'll get one going as soon as Act Blue gets him in their system.)

The last minute e-vite came a few days ago from friends with impeccable progressive cred-- some early (pre-cover of ROLLING STONE) activists in Howard Dean's California state campaign. It was for a hastily put-together fund-raiser for Lamont, who has been planning on being in L.A. months ago on non-political matters. Lamont is an entrepreneurial guy from Greenwich and all most people know about him is that he's taking on the odious Bush-Democrat from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman.

Yesterday Lamont created a "candidate committee," which isn't the same as declaring but does allow him to start collecting contributions. Liberal activist/Executive Director of Connecticut Citizen Action Group Tom Swan is heading it-- a good sign.

The mostly DFA crowd filled the house and Nick and his gracious, friendly wife, Anne and some friends spent time talking with everyone individually before he launched into a great talk about the race. Look, I go to a lot of these candidate meetings. This guy looks great, sounds great and it all seems very kosher. I was a little nervous because all I had read about him was that he was a millionaire businessman. His story is a lot more compelling than that. First of all his a quintessential all-American kind of entrepreneurial guy-- a living embodiment of the best in the American dream. He's as far from a corporate type of Big Business monster as you can be. He completely understands why it's essential for business that reforms like universal health care get hammered out. (He reminded me of Howard Dean when he talked about that.) This guy teaches entrepreneurship in Bridgeport High, a tough inner city school.

Although he was a town selectman, not only is Ned not a politician, he has a vibe that told me that even if he's elected to the U.S. Senate, he'll never become some kind of careerist self-server, but will always look at his role as that of a civil servant and guardian of his constituents' interests.

As soon as he walked in the door, just a few minutes after me and a good 30 minutes before the crowd showed up, I got to chat with him about the issues. The first thing I wanted to get a sense of was how he left about Iraq. I was wary of hearing any double-talk or weasel words. There were none. He went right to Jack Murtha and showed me immediately that not only does he support a plan for withdrawal but that he has a far better grasp of what the war is all about than old-line Democratic "thinkers" like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Wes Clark (all of whom are still babbling nonsense about "winning," an absurd concept to begin with). Later when he talked to the whole group he contrasted Bush's (latest) approach (shared not just by Lieberman but by even some well-meaning-- if limited-- Democrats) which is basically that the U.S. will step back when "the Iraqis" step up with a more well-reasoned and thought-out approach which is that the Iraqis will step up when-- and not until-- the U.S. starts stepping back in a serious way. "The invasion of Iraq was a colossal foreign policy disaster." That's clear. That's simple. That's what Democrats running for office should all be saying.

He talked a lot about the harmful trend of the Federal Government increasingly intruding into the private lives of American citizens and how that trend has to be turned around. He told us that for him Alito was not a close call. I have no doubt that he saw Alito as much a dangerous threat to American liberty as I did. In fact, he seems like the kind of guy who's going to carefully consider every issue and come up with the right approach across the board-- kind of a polar opposite of Joe Lieberman.


THURSDAY EVENING UPDATE: ACT BLUE JUST ACTIVATED NED LAMONT'S ACT BLUE PAGE

Here's your chance to tell Lieberman what you think of him in language he understands. And at the same time, advance the candidacy of a potentially great, progressive U.S. Senator. It's easy. Start right here.