The Obama Diary

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