Extreme Liberal has a terrific post (which I linked yesterday - here) with a transcript from a recent podcast from The Bob and Chez Show (featuring Bob Cesca and Chez Pazienza).
In case you you don’t listen to podcasts, the video above has an extract from the show (recorded after OFA New Mexico State Director Ray Sandoval sent an email to supporters attacking Firebaggers and Paul Krugman).
It’s the best analysis of the Firebaggers I’ve heard. Be good to yourself, subscribe to The Bob and Chez Show on iTunes.
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.
Extreme Liberal: This is a must see, vintage smackdown of the “firebaggers.” Lawrence O’Donnell and Ezra Klein educate the foaming at the mouth “progressives” Jane Hamsher, Adam Green and some other firebagger wanna-be named Mike Roger Hodge. Watch and enjoy!
Thom Anderson (SCNow.com): “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
That is the oath that members of the United States Congress, both houses, take as they begin their duties. Sounds good, but a majority in this Congress put an asterisk on it. Maybe they had their fingers crossed as they recited the oath.
The asterisk concerns a pledge, developed in the ‘80s by a 20-something fellow named Grover Norquist, who grew up rich and privileged, received two degrees from the dreaded Harvard, and then went directly into partisan, highly ideological company in the Reagan White House where he got the “inspiration” for the oath. An Internet search indicates he has never worked in the “real America” that right-wingers so revere, only in strong ideological company.
… When they sign this pledge, politicians promise that under no circumstance, not war, not danger of the government defaulting on legally and properly owed debt, not danger that the infrastructure will crumble us into Third World status, will they tolerate an increase in government revenue….
In other words, when these politicians swore before God and their country that they take their obligations “freely” and “without any mental reservation,” they were not truthful. How can they claim to face their obligations in Congress freely when they have made a prior pledge they consider unbreakable not to do certain things? They can’t.
…. This pledge of which most voters are unaware has been taken by some Congressmen since the 1980s. It was a major reason that a “conservative” president and Congress not only failed to pay for a war that has gone sour but cut taxes as they entered it, turning an inherited surplus into a huge deficit.
They also added an expensive Medicare drug benefit without funding, further increasing the deficit. This higher cost they created, they now use as an excuse to scrap Medicare.
Also, you wouldn’t pick a music-hater to conduct an orchestra. Why pick a government-hater to run your country? When electing people who are against government, think of Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. They don’t have real governments.
Full article here - thanks again Ladyhawke
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Let’s never forget, Norquist is the traitor Firedogfake’s Hamsher teamed up with when they campaigned together for the resignation of Rahm Emanuel:
Kevin Drum (Mother Jones, December 2009): Apparently Jane Hamsher has decided that a healthcare bill that provides a trillion dollars worth of benefit to low and middle income workers is so odious that mere opposition isn’t enough. Nor is opposition that increasingly employs the worst kind of right-wing talking points. No, it’s so odious that it deserves a scorched earth campaign against the Obama White House in partnership with Grover Norquist. Hard to know what to say about this. What’s next? A joint Twitter campaign with Sarah Palin? A letter writing campaign cosponsored by Richard Viguerie? A joint lawsuit with Orly Taitz? Jeebus.
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Nicholas D. Kristof (NYT): If China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage.
Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists.
We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home.
…. on this issue, many House Republicans aren’t serious, they’re just obsessive in a destructive way. The upshot is that in their effort to protect the American economy from debt, some of them are willing to drag it over the cliff of default.
…. Republican zeal to lower debts could result in increased interest expenses and higher debts. Their mania to save taxpayers could cost taxpayers. That suggests not governance so much as fanaticism.
More broadly, a default would leave America a global laughingstock. Our “soft power,” our promotion of democracy around the world, and our influence would all take a hit. The spectacle of paralysis in the world’s largest economy is already bewildering to many countries. If there is awe for our military prowess and delight in our movies and music, there is scorn for our political/economic management.
While one danger to national security comes from the risk of default, another comes from overzealous budget cuts — especially in education, at the local, state and national levels. When we cut to the education bone, we’re not preserving our future but undermining it.
… “The attack on literacy programs reflects a broader assault on education programs,” said Rosa DeLauro, a Democratic member of Congress from Connecticut. She notes that Republicans want to cut everything from early childhood programs to Pell grants for college students. Republican proposals have singled out some 43 education programs for elimination, but it’s not seen as equally essential to end tax loopholes on hedge fund managers.
So let’s remember not only the national security risks posed by Iran and Al Qaeda. Let’s also focus on the risks, however unintentional, from domestic zealots.
‘Obama’ sneaks up on unsuspecting babies and tries to indoctrinate them with his brand of Hitlerism
After entering seriously ugly Firedogfake/Glenn GreenBeck cyberspace territory today to read up on a bunch of stuff, including Firedogfake’s threats to Eclectablog (see here), what struck me most was the seething hatred of Barack Obama the man, never mind Barack Obama the President.
I sometimes enter Teabagger territory just to entertain myself with their spectacular stupidity, but honestly, even there you’d struggle to find the same levels of hatred that you get from Firedogfake, Glenn GreenBeck and the like.
We are talking foaming-at-the-mouth hatred here.
Here’s an example.
On May 18 of this year this was posted at Jane Hamsher’s Firedogfake:
It’s now July 18th and that post - about the need for “Afro-Americans” to enter an “education program” - is still on FDL.
Hamsher owns FDL, so she owns this post - so spare us all the excuse that it was only written by one of FDL’s diarists. If Hamsher found an entry on the site that was critical of her, she’d have it deleted in a blink of an eye.
But a post about the need for “Afro-Americans” to enter an “education program” is, evidently, perfectly fine.
Truly, this is as ugly as it can get.
Let’s cut the crap and call it for what it is: Hamsher and her FDL sheeple are race-baiting scum.
If they weren’t, an FDL post calling for “Afro-Americans” to be entered in an “education program” would have been deleted.
But it’s still there.
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The more anonymous threats I get from Hamsherbots, the more I’ll post about her - and that’s a promise
Unlike Hamsher, I don’t – and never, ever will – ask for or accept donations.
If anyone has a few dollars to spare, I will ask them to contribute to Obama/Biden 2012.
Some of us aren’t in it for the money or attention – truly, we’re just not that desperate.
Hiya everyone, sorry I wasn’t able to be around much yesterday, hopefully I’ll catch up later today. Just to say, thanks so much for the great response to the ‘Here we go again‘ post below - but honestly, I can’t take any credit at all for its content, that’s down to the excellent work being done by bloggers like:
Extreme Liberal: Adam Green’s Dishonest Attack And Appeal For Cash (here)
Progressive Electorate: Jane Hamsher’s Accountability Now PAC Raises $$ Questions (here)
Rcade (Daily Kos): How Jane Hamsher Spends Her PAC Money (here)
Drumsnwhistles: Federal Election Commission to Jane Hamsher: Tell us more, please (here)
Workbench: How Jane Hamsher Spends Her PAC Money (see here)
Osbornelink: Nixon had a word for people like Jane Hamsher (here)
Mother Jones: Strange Bedfellows Indeed (Hamsher and Grover Norquist) (here)
HistoryByDay (Young Turks): Jane Hamsher - Bought And Sold? (here)
Rooted Cosmopolitan: Media Types: Don’t Call Someone Who Works for Republicans a Disaffected Progressive (here)
W.E.E. See You: Lip Synching Liberals – WEE Told You So (here)
Osbornelink: Jane The Hamsher Strikes Again (here)
Moderate Left: Can’t Shake the Devil’s Hand and Say You’re Only Kidding (here)
Drumsnwhistles: Jane Hamsher’s crusade to hand government back to conservatives (here)
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I’m sure I’ve left out lots more great links - if you think of any please add them in the comments and I’ll update the post. And if you can, read through those links, they reveal so much.
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Update - thanks Hopefruit:
Smartypants: Some of you probably read a recent article by Eclectablog titled Why I will never post another word at My.Firedoglake.com. He also posted it at Daily Kos.
Apparently Hamsher saw it because according to this post at Angry Black Lady, he got the following email from one of her employees:
The chances of you becoming a paid front pager somewhere have dropped significantly … Jane will never forget and she will bad mouth you to the major blog owners if your name comes up. She is a friend of Marcos [sic] and Josh Marshall and the guys who run the American Prospect and pretty much anyone on the liberal side of the blogs and you’ve made a major career fuck up.
…. It’s past time for folks to wake up and smell the rancid brew this woman is creating …. What this email does expose is her motives and strategy. I think it’s high time that word got out and people started to ask proprietors at blogs like Daily Kos, Think Progress and the American Prospect to stand up and show their independence by denouncing Hamsher and any associations they might have had with her.
…. If the cost of being a paid liberal blogger is kowtowing to someone who will try to destroy your career if you say something negative about her, I won’t pay that price. I probably make more money in my day job than Jane does keeping the internet safe from pragprog Obama supporters and I can blog circles around her doing it as a hobby.
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Read the full post here - and read Eclectablog on his experience here.
And see this post from Smartypants from June about Matt Osborne - he was “offered a paid writing gig in “the movement” (his term), but was told that if he took it, he would have to dial back the criticism of Hamsher”. (See Osborne’s Tweets from Netroots Nations here - thanks Angry Black Lady)
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A writer at ExiledOnline had a similar experience to Eclectablog - see here
“….. Within minutes after this article was posted, Michael Whitney of Firedoglake sent Mike Elk, author of this article, the classic Hollywood death-knell: “You’ll never work in this town again.” Whitney, who once ran a labor blog for Firedoglake until it was taken down because it was so poorly put together and drew such anemic traffic, now serves as Vice President of the Membership Board for Firedoglake. Apparently one of his duties is acting as Hamsher’s hall monitor, policing the internet for anyone not sufficiently worshipful of his employer.”
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BWD posted a Deepak Chopra article today at The Only Adult In The Room (see below) which made me think of this line from the Moderate Left link above. It was a reference to Hamsher teaming up with Grover Norquist in their anti-Rahm Emanuel campaign and her working against the President’s healthcare reform efforts (remember, she teamed up with the Tea Party on that issue: see here):
“She is now working with people who do not wish to improve the Obama Administration, but instead wish to destroy it.”
And that’s been the way since day one, even before he had a chance to ‘betray!’ them. She and her Firedogfake sheeple will team up with literally anyone to try to defeat the President in 2012 - even Norquist and the Tea Party!!- regardless of the consequences for America. And still they call themselves progressives.
Any way, here are some extracts from that Chopra article:
Deepak Chopra: One of the virtues of being on the liberal side of politics is that total obedience isn’t required …. In a political climate where it feels as if the inmates are running the asylum - as in the current Republican threat to default on America’s debt - the prevailing sanity of President Obama is something that others and I have taken for granted.
We cannot afford that luxury any more, I’m afraid.
For many reasons, this is the moment when loyalty is going to count the most. That’s a hard sentence to write. Liberal politics is based on a non-regimented, all-inclusive approach to democracy. Freedom of thought is paramount. But certain harsh realities must be faced. For thirty years and more, the progressive tradition has been severely undermined, dating back to Nixon’s “Southern strategy” (coddle the racists) and Ronald Reagan’s smiling reactionary agenda (AIDS victims deserve what they get), through the first President Bush’s Willie Horton strategy (another boost for racism) and the second President Bush’s deceptive “compassionate conservatism.”
It was such a relief to return to humane, non-ideological governance when President Obama won in 2008 that we underestimated the debasing effect that two generations of right-wing indoctrination has had …
…. all of us who have taken advantage of our liberal heritage to question and criticize President Obama need to step back and consider the radical nature of the opposition, from the Supreme Court down to the local precinct … …. Since 9/11, playing upon fear has been wildly successful for the right wing - it re-elected a catastrophic president…
If ever there was a time to stand behind the captain, this is it. Not because pluralism and free expression are wrong. They aren’t and never will be. But like Churchill calling upon a coalition cabinet in the depth of the war years, it’s paramount that we see the greater danger for what it is. Attention was drawn to the cover of a recent issue of the Economist, which showed a tall President Obama towering over a squabbling handful of pygmy Republican rivals for the presidency. The headline read, “He Could Still Lose.” We need to remember that if that were to happen, it wouldn’t be because President Obama made too many mistakes or failed to pass a sufficiently liberal agenda. The reason would be that all of us forgot the 30-year reign of reactionary administrations (minus the Clinton years) and the power of debased politics to keep coming back, again and 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 Shoq’s experience with Miss BP here - and their Twitter exchange here
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This gem of a 2010 story by David Weigel (now Slate) in the Washington Independent can never be re-posted enough:
Weigel was reporting on an anti-healthcare reform Tea Party rally where he spoke to one of the organizers and speakers, Kathryn Serkes. She told him:
“I’m in contact with folks on the progressive side. They’re saying right now that Pelosi’s almost there with the votes. What they’re saying is that there’s some serious arm-twisting - their words were union thuggery. One progressive source told me that there was serious union thuggery this weekend, targeting Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.).”
The source, she confirmed, was Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.
Weigel emailed Hamsher to ask her if she was, in fact, working with the Tea Party on the issue and if she had used the term “union thuggery” in her conversations with Serkes.
Hamsher didn’t reply, instead posting this at Firedoglake in response to his report (‘Tea Party Activist Working With Firedoglake’s Hamsher on HCR Whip Count’ - here)
“Dave Weigel isn’t a journalist, he’s a smear-monger that makes things up and projects his own fantasies onto his stories ….I know Katherine, we were on MSNBC together and we’ve spoken about working on the pot legalization measure in California in the future …. she tells me that when Weigel approached her and asked her who her “source” was, she didn’t say. He said “It’s Jane Hamsher, isn’t it…I’ve been around.” According to Katherine, she didn’t respond.
….I’m not “working” with the tea partiers on health care. But Weigel doesn’t care about the truth …. He’s just a fantasist printing propaganda, and the Washington Independent has no higher standards than to print it.”
Problem?
Weigel had a recording of his conversation with the Tea Party woman:
SERKES: They’re saying that there’s some serious arm-twisting, and their words were union thuggery.
WEIGEL: Who’s the they?
SERKES: The progressive side. A progressive source told me that there was serious union thuggery going on this weekend.
WEIGEL: Is this the Firedoglake folks?
SERKES: It’s Jane. You’re figured it out.
WEIGEL: I’m not new at this.
SERKES: She said they were after Altmire this weekend. Yeah, because Jane and I last talked Saturday.
Hamsher’s response to being outed?
“Weigel has now posted the audio tape of his conversation with Katherine Serkes at the Tea Party event, in which he does not inform her that he was taping her. The recording confirms that she did use my name, however. I’ve asked Weigel twice now if at any point prior to this segment he informed her that she was being recorded, and he has not responded.
…. attending a Tea Party event and taping attendees without their knowledge, then posting that tape to discredit them in support of passing the health care bill, sounds more like the actions of a Democratic political operative …. he aspires to be a member of a cliquish, insider set with the moral flexibility to align themselves with anyone in power.”
Ah yes, the big issue here was the recording, not the fact that it had been revealed that Hamsher was working with the Tea Party towards their common goal: the defeat of President Obama’s healthcare bill. Or that Serkes quoted Hamsher using Tea Party speak: “Union thuggery.” Note how she failed to address being exposed, instead resorting to personal abuse.
(Links: here and here)
After exposing Hamsher, Weigel asked for “an apology and a retraction” - he’s still waiting.
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Fox and Friend:
Yep, she joined in on Fox News’ ‘Kill The Bill’ campaign, appearing on the network soon after calling for a boycott of it.
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This story, from May of this year, is an eye-opener too:
Mike Elk (ExiledOnline, May 2011): Yesterday I confronted Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake, over her refusal to honor a labor boycott against the Huffington Post that two major writers unions have called for.
… Hamsher wasn’t satisfied merely crossing the picket line: She went on the offensive against boycott organizers … In an email exchange with several members of the labor movement, Hamsher jeered at the writers’ union organizers, mocking their organizing efforts….
In response to Hamsher’s outrageous anti-labor attacks, I wrote to one of these listserv groups on which both Hamsher and I were members: “Jane Hamsher the last person I would ever want to have as my shop steward” … this was not the first time Hamsher has taken a position hostile to workers’ rights and labor ….
…Hamsher also attacked Sal Roselli (president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers) implying that he was an Italian thug, an old tactic used by anti-labor PR people to smear labor activists as mobsters ….
….When I raised this ugly episode yesterday in the context of Hamsher’s attacks on the HuffPo boycott, Hamsher responded to me, “You’re just halucinating [sic] now, Mike. I never ‘tried to get people fired from their jobs,’ nor did I ever use ‘race baiting language to paint Sal Roselli as a thug.’….You’re either really mentally ill, or incredibly malicious.”
….. This was a new low for Hamsher. She and I had previously discussed my struggle with depression and Asperger’s Syndrome … I pointed out to Jane that such comments from her about my struggle with mental health were extraordinarily hurtful and petty .. I replied that my ability to analyze and criticize the labor situation at the Huffington Post should be judged by the merits of my analysis, and not by my battles with mental illness.
Hamsher became even more petty and vindictive - she responded by attacking me:
“You don’t have ‘analysis,’ you’re either a liar or you have no ability to discern the truth.” …. “You can’t blame either on asperger’s syndrome. That’s not a symptom. Your reflexive crouch into tribalism and ‘poor me’ to excuse reprehensible behavior is really feeble.” …. “This may be due to the fact that you’re incredibly sick, and unable to discern reality….”
… I know I have mental illness issues and it took me a very long time to finally have the courage to write about them in public. But I have to ask Hamsher: what sort of pathology drives a woman of her stature and prominence to belittle the mental illness of a young reporter who has done nothing but stand up for workers’ rights and union democracy?
….Update from The eXiled Editor: Within minutes after this article was posted, Michael Whitney of Firedoglake sent Mike Elk, author of this article, the classic Hollywood death-knell: “You’ll never work in this town again.” Whitney … now serves as Vice President of the Membership Board for Firedoglake. Apparently one of his duties is acting as Hamsher’s hall monitor, policing the internet for anyone not sufficiently worshipful of his employer….
Full post here
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See here
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See here
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Rooted Cosmopolitan
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Five years ago she posted this photoshopped picture of Joe Lieberman as a ‘black’ man on Huffington Post, in an attempt to describe his efforts to “woo African American voters”. The photo was promptly removed, and she offered a ‘sorry if you were offended’ apology.
Link
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Osborneink.com (December 2010): Jane the Hamsher is one of the cool kids… yet she wouldn’t recognize progress if it smacked her in the face, and so far has achieved nothing resembling progress on any front. Indeed, I have been waiting for someone to tell me what this woman’s “progressive” credentials are.
She is first and foremost a self-aggrandizing publicity whore whose Accountability Now PAC has so far given $0 to progressive candidates in the first two years of its existence while spending $285,272. If she ran a non-profit this way, it would get shut down. As things stand, the PAC (which also counts Kos and Glenn Greenwald as operators) has only made noise.
…. Hamsher’s kill-the-bill madness included an appearance on FOX News just months after her own call to boycott the network. She later returned to that channel spouting nonsense about cap-and-trade. Her recent appearances on Lawrence O’Donnell leave me convinced progress is not her purpose.
Jane has a troubling problem with transparency and truthfulness. Her web ad company took money from BP while Hamsher simultaneously attacked the Sierra Club for doing the same. The numbers for Accountability Now complete the picture: Jane Hamsher is a for-profit fringe phenomenon.
Accountability Now PAC began with $15,841 from BreakTheMatrix, a Ron Paul organization - meaning the money trail leads to the same libertarianism that spawned the tea party…..
…There is nothing “left” left about Hamsher. She is known as a firebagger, after the name of her website. But in Nixon’s time, she would have been called a ratfucker.
ADDING: As you can see by the comments below, this post has brought the FDL chorus out in full song to accuse this blog of being a “cult” to the “dear leader.” It’s all projection: Hamsher and Greenwald are the closest thing the left has to cult figures. Regular readers will know this blog rarely posts on lefties and will recognize their behavior from my examinations of the Glenn Beck cult.
Full post here
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rcade (DK, March 2010): Firedoglake publisher Jane Hamsher has become one of the most polarizing figures in the liberal blogosphere, moving people sharply to the pro or con column with her outspoken opposition to the health care reform bill, appearances on Fox News bashing the Obama administration and the letter she sent with conservative activist Grover Norquist demanding the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Hamsher wields a lot of influence by operating two Democratic political action committees, FDL Action PAC and Accountability Now PAC. By the end of 2009 these PACs had accumulated $454,000 from thousands of individual donors….
The Federal Election Commission reports show that Hamsher’s PACs are a significant source of income for Firedoglake, but my experience trying to question her about them suggests that she’s not big on transparency.
… 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)….
…In the six years since she founded Firedoglake … Hamsher has built a well-oiled outrage machine that’s now firmly pointed at the White House and its Democratic allies in Congress….
….Hamsher’s exceptionally good at getting people to put their money where her mouth is. But because Firedoglake is a blog that’s dependent on financial support from PACs, it makes me wonder how much of her outrage is real and how much is driven by the constant need to fire up donors.
I posed that question to David Ferguson, who used to be in charge of Firedoglake’s “Late Night FDL” feature under his pseudonym TRex. He replied, “I would hope that Jane wouldn’t be so cynical as to exploit her readers in any way. I do know that working for her, there was a constant sense of crisis. Everything was always a blazing, four-alarm emergency, and I think some of that is what comes through on her blog. I don’t know whether that’s something she’s working for effect or if that’s just the way she is. Some of her alliances over the last year have genuinely surprised me, though, particularly with regard to the flap over the health care bill.”
Full post here
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HistoryByDay (March 2010)
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WeeSeeYou
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Osborneink: …. Jane Hamsher is quite obviously accepting money from BP. Why is that important? Because according to Hamsher, anyone who takes money from the oil company is guilty of selling out:
“Carbon cap and trade was a scheme cooked up by BP and Enron lobbyists in the mid nineties. BP has subsequently dropped millions of dollars into the coffers of green groups to pave the way for it. Obama’s cry to pass Kerry-Lieberman as punishment for BP is not only highly ironic, it’s also illustrative of just how broken our national discourse around environmental issues has become.
Until progressive groups successfully address the challenge of funding themselves independent of the elite individuals and institutions that act as enforcers of a corporate agenda, they will not be able to successfully advocate for progressive causes. Any success they might have will mean that their funding dries up, and they will cease to exist.”
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Link
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ABL (BalloonJuice):
See full post here
ABL’s Balloon Juice post refers to this campaign promoted by ‘figaro’ at FDL:
ABL (Balloon Juice):
The post about “Afro-Americans” needing an “education program” appeared on FDL on May 18 - it’s still there, never removed.
Blue Virginia: …. Keith Olbermann …. whose resurrected show Countdown is an echo chamber of one-sided thought with no room for debate and no tolerance for any divergence of opinion ….. ended his first program on the Current TV network with some singularly unsolicited instructions (not advice, but instructions, mind you) of what exactly the President should do regarding Afghanistan.
…I was born during Eisenhower’s first Administration. I barely remember Kennedy, and came of age during Nixon and Watergate. In all that time, I can never remember any President previously getting so much unsolicited advice from all quarters, nor can I ever remember any President receiving such hateful and spiteful gratuitous criticism and petulant behaviour from people who are supposed to be from his side of the political equation.
Before every major statement or speech, up pop various and sundry professionally Leftish talking heads, first, to tell us all what the President SHOULD say in his address; then after the speech, itself, they inhabit our screens, the very embodiment of moral and righteous consternation, to tell us why and how the President is wrong, what he should have said and, just basically, what a very bad, weak and naughty boy he has been. The boy bit is never openly stated, but it is just as much implied as if Joe Wilson, himself, had been issuing the criticism.
….From Olbermann and his crony, Michael Moore, on down, we’re presented with a series of armchair quarterbacks, who would always do a better job than this President…
… what’s so infuriating to Keith (and to Miss Jane and Marse Cenk and Miss Joan and all the rest) is the fact that, damn it, this President SHOULD be awfully sorry that he hasn’t done anything they reckon he’s said he’d do but carries on doing what he thinks is best and isn’t sorry at all. In fact, on occasion, he’s been damned uppity towards them …
Michael Grunwald (Time): There was a telling confrontation at last week’s Netroots Nation gathering …. a bisexual volunteer for President Obama reelection campaign approached the stage to hand a flyer to Dan Choi ….. Choi dramatically ripped up the flyer and declared that he wouldn’t support Obama.
And why should he? What has Obama ever done to help gays serve openly in the military? Other than repeal don’t-ask-don’t-tell, so that gays can serve openly in the military? Ah, “the professional left,” never happy unless it’s unhappy…..
With friends like these, who needs Republicans?….
…..the disillusionment addicts of the left have concocted a narrative of Obama-as-sellout that bears little resemblance to his actual presidency…
….It was a similar story in the epic fight over health care reform. Obama finally achieved the eternal progressive dream of universal coverage, overruling aides who wanted to settle for incremental improvements. But the left was mad because his plan didn’t include a “public option,” a brand-new progressive dream. Earth to the left: He didn’t have the votes for a public option. There was nothing he could have said or done to get the votes for a public option. He’s a politician, not a magician.
…But when you’re convinced the president just isn’t that into you, the facts are irrelevant…..
It’s easy for activists to complain about imperfect achievements like the stimulus or Obamacare, especially when they’re not among the 3 million Americans who would’ve been unemployed without the stimulus or the 50 million Americans who would’ve been uninsured without Obamacare. Complaining is what activists do….
……Presidents are supposed to make progress, whether progressives like it or not.
Rooted Cosmopolitan: …..CommonSense Media, a firm that does work for Republicans, is led by Jane Hamsher.
In isolation, I don’t care what Jane Hamsher does for money …. but it’s time for the media to stop lazily presenting her as a representative figure of liberal Democrats, of the Netroots or of ideologically committed progressives. She’s not. She’s someone who leads a firm that Republicans pay to help them defeat Democrats.
….CommonSense Media also does work for entities working against progressive interests and Democratic candidates. At the same time BP was being accused of “greenwashing” their record after the Gulf oil spill, CommonSense media was doing online advertising for BP….
….If the national political media is going to present Jane Hamsher as a one-time Obama supporter who has now concluded that Obama “just isn’t in to her,” fine. But it’s horribly irresponsible and inaccurate for the press to file those stories without noting that she at one time did business with the DNC, and apparently now does business with Republicans seeking to defeat Democrats. She’s not just a disaffected progressive, she’s someone who leads a business that takes money from Republicans to defeat Democrats.
Bob Cesca: Several members of the firebagger high command appeared on a panel at Netroots Nation to beat their myopic unrealistic mythological drum about how President Obama is the worst president ever, etc, etc.
…..it was Dan Choi, John Aravosis of AmericaBlog and, naturally, Jane Hamsher collectively lying about the president’s record on, among other things, LGBT rights.
Dan Choi appeared on Lawrence O’Donnell last night to repeat all of the hyperbolic silliness about how the president has broken all of his promises to the gay community - an accusation that simply is not true….
Here’s Aravosis during the panel: “…. We were told he’d be a fierce advocate, and he’s been not fierce at all and not much of an advocate.”
Not a fierce advocate? Not that into you? Horseshit. Utter horseshit. In addition to the Obama administration deciding not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act because, in in the view of the Obama Justice Department, the law is unconstitutional, the president has also racked up the following LGBT achievements: see here
Check that out. That’s a long, long list for someone who “just isn’t that into” same-sex rights.
….Worse than Bush!
…..the firebaggers need to ditch this fiction about the president and embrace reality - or, better yet, people simply need to stop buying into their ridiculous whining, lying and undermining of a realistic progressive agenda.
Full post here
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It’s completely sublime how the real progessives, like Bob Cesca, are destroying the Firebaggers’ comical appearance at Netroots with plain old facts. Love it.
four panelists - [gay-activist Lt. Dan] Choi, immigration reform supporter Felipe Matos, America Blog writer John Aravosis and Fire Dog Lake Founder Jane Hamsher - said they are planning to hold the White House’s collective feet to the fire for its decisions on civil rights, whether it would hurt Obama’s reelection chances or not.
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to chuckle. I realize these are serious issues, and in no way do I diminish their importance. But being threatened by the adolescent malcontents of the utterly insignificant, whining teapot-tempests of Americablog and FireDogLake is like being under fire from the Italian infantry, circa 1943. One scarcely notices.
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Be good to yourself, subscribe to PM Carpenter’s blog, it’s utterly sublime
BooMan: For the second straight year, I declined to attend the Netroots Nation conference. I’ve always enjoyed the conferences, but I don’t belong there anymore, and this is why (a link to the Huffy Post ‘Progressives ‘Break Up’ With Obama’ story).
Let me start with the DREAM Act. If immigration reform supporters are mobilizing against the president, they need to have their heads examined. Here’s a reminder (see BooMan’s post):
…..The president is not a magician. Working against his reelection is not going to help pass the DREAM Act or any other piece of positive immigration legislation.
Moving on to gay rights …. John Aravosis has been acting like he’s been betrayed since before the president took his oath of office. The president kept his promise to repeal the DADT policy, and it was anything but easy. Aravosis says that all he wants is what the president promised, but the president never said that he approves of gay marriage. Nonetheless, he has instructed the Department of Justice to no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, he’s signed a Hate Crimes bill, and he’s expanded benefits for same-sex couples who work in the Foreign Service and executive branch.
……I’m sorry, John, but your own words condemn you …. he did the one thing that he actually has the power to do; he told the DOJ to stop defending the DOMA in court.
And then there is Jane Hamsher, who has made it her career to harass the president. The less said about her the better.
There’s a line between principled advocacy for the issues you care about and being a careerist champion of the disgruntled.
Upton Sinclair used to say, “”It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” That’s what happened to a big part of the blogosphere.
NY Times: An unusual split in the labor movement has developed over President Obama’s proposed free-trade pact with South Korea, with two powerful unions backing the deal - a development that experts say will make Congressional ratification far more likely.
The United Automobile Workers are pleased that the agreement will increase auto exports to Korea, and the United Food and Commercial Workers are encouraged that the pact will bolster meat exports to Korea. Both have embraced the deal….
By supporting the agreement, the two unions are breaking with organized labor’s traditional opposition to free-trade agreements as a threat to American jobs…
….Facing pressure from the autoworkers and other unions, Mr. Obama pressed South Korea to renegotiate important provisions in the 2007 accord. The revised deal would reduce tariffs and other trade restrictions on American auto and beef exports and continue American tariffs on Korean cars and trucks for an extended period.
The U.A.W.’s president, Bob King, praised the agreement, saying it would significantly expand American auto exports to South Korea: “I’m supporting this because I think it’s in the best interests of our members and in the best interests of our country. The most important thing for the economic well-being of the U.S. is to protect jobs and create jobs, and I think this agreement will do that.”
….Jane Hamsher, a prominent left-wing blogger who founded Firedoglake, wrote that the U.A.W. was “a bunch of selfish pigs” for embracing the agreement and was a “Chinese-style union” that was “much closer to the interests of management and the government than those of its line workers.”
She asserted that the U.A.W. embraced the accord in part to thank President Obama for rescuing General Motors and Chrysler.
WTF?
“Government assistance to General Motors and Chrysler led to savings of more than 1.1 million jobs in 2009 alone, according to a recently released Research Memorandum published by the Center for Automotive Research”
So, Hamsher attacks the UAW for being grateful for the saving of 1.1 million jobs …. but opposes the trade deal because, she reckons, it will threaten jobs?
OpenSecrets
BooMan: For the second straight year, I declined to attend the Netroots Nation conference. I’ve always enjoyed the conferences, but I don’t belong there anymore, and this is why (a link to the Huffy Post ‘Progressives ‘Break Up’ With Obama’ story).
White House.gov
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