Friday, August 04, 2006

Sen. "Mentum" Lieberman: Using Bush'shit Dirty Tricks

I haven't seen much news of this in other places: Lieberman using DC Lobbyists to pose as average citizen-supporters. I found it thanks to Tom Tomorrow. Of course, MyDD's Matt Stoller (he of the first link) acknowledges that MyDD's Aldon got there first.

It has run in a story by Jennifer Manes in Connecticut's Record-Journal (at least a trial subscription necessary). As Stoller asks, will the mainstream media pick it up, though?

My guess: judging from the oh-so-extensive coverage of Bush's use of this tactic in 2000 (documented, according to journalist Eric Alterman in his book What Liberal Media?, in the Bush campaign's tax documents as they hired entertainment for their out-of-town "average Florida citizen" protesters), I'm gonna say... um, no.

Though, on The Coffee House, Nathan Newman points out that there's no particular guarantee that Lamont is a super-progressive member of Left Blogistan -- actually, there's significant evidence against this. He is, however, better tha Lieberman, and perhaps can be considered a minor good instead of lesser of evils (my words, not Newman's).

To wrap all this up, Billmon points out the Lamont still pretty much falls into the rest of the Dipshit Dems as far as the conflagration and tragedies in the Middle East, a disappointment in this area like Howard Dean, who recently took the opportunity with other Dems to chide the Iraqi Prime Minister over his critique of Israel's role in the conflict with Lebanon for insufficiently blame the Lebanese, who are rather busy getting blown up. (Hezbollah is of course acting criminally as well and busy blowing up swaths of Israel, but when 300 or so civilians have died on one side, and something like 12 on the other, well... my sympathies in general lie with the heavier civilian casualties, the people of Lebanon, who are seemingly being collectively punished by Israel. A scan of the linked document shows that both sides are perpetrators of war crimes, but the greater capacity of Israel to destroy and deprive civilian entities indiscriminately places, in my opinion, a greater burden on them -- this is a burden they themselves have taken on through their choices of targets. (Not to mention that it doesn't seem to be, you know, WORKING.) To synthesize Billmon and Newman, Lamont should be supported -- as I blogged earlier, NYT's endorsement of Lamont over Lieberman points out the nature of his actions antithetical to, in my opinion, democratic dissent and Democractic dissent -- but Lamont also should not be viewed as a great white hope. Which, you know, I don't.

If you want to be crazy, crazy like a fox, there's also the Green, Ralph Ferrucci.

Sigh. It's too bad the Greens imploded over 2004....

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