DL Open Thread: Thursday, November 16, 2023

Do We Really Need The Governor’s Wife In The Senate?  New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy thinks so.  Me?  Uh, no:

Politically, Tammy Murphy has been one of the New Jersey Democratic Party’s top fundraisers, helping her develop relationships with party bosses who hold sway over county party endorsements. Those endorsements could award Murphy “the line” in most counties — a unique feature of ballot design in New Jersey that allows county party-endorsed candidates to run in primaries in the same column or row as every other country-endorsed candidate, from town council to president.

Murphy’s entry into the race wasn’t greeted with enthusiasm by some progressives, who saw it as nepotism and somewhat ironic, considering that Menendez had paved the way for his own son to be elected to the House of Representatives more than a year before his indictment.

In other words, the Jersey equivalent of the Delaware Way.

This Guy Spoke At The Rally For Israel In DC On Monday:  Rev. John Hagee, who says that peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians would be the ‘work of the anti-Christ’.  You know, because of The Rapture, whatever the fuck that is:

The head of an influential group called Christians United for Israel, Hagee made national news in 2008 when Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, was forced to disavow his endorsement after anti-Catholic remarks Hagee had made were publicized. (He eventually apologized.) Hagee also has been a zealous foe of gay rights and claimed Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment against New Orleans for hosting a gay pride parade.

So when word hit that he was on the line-up for Tuesday’s event, other supporters of the rally raised hell. Hadar Susskind, the head of Americans for Peace Now, an endorser of the demonstration, declared, “I am horrified that he was given this platform. His history of hateful comments should disqualify him from decent company, much less from speaking on stage. He is not welcome and should not speak.” And J Street, another liberal Jewish American organization, stated, “A dangerous bigot like Hagee should not be welcomed anywhere in our community. Period.”

But Hagee is a big believer in End Times Christianity and preaches that, according to the Bible, at some point the anti-Christ will arrive, Jesus and the dead will rise, the rapture will ensue (lifting the truly faithful into air and toward heaven), and that everyone left behind will witness years of destruction, disasters, and absolute misery. Hailing Jews as God’s “chosen people,” Hagee asserts that Israel plays a crucial role in this grand finale. Not surprisingly, Hagee sells books and videos in which he explains all this in great detail based on biblical passages.

In other words, just another religious charlatan monetizing his nuttiness to gullible Christians.  Who was given a platform at the largest pro-Israeli rally in recent memory.

Yep, The Leaker Of Those Georgia Audio Tapes Was A Defense Attorney For One Of The Alleged Co-Conspirators.   Geez, couldn’t he have at least waited a couple of days so that the conspiracy theorists could have conjured up some sinister motivation on the part of Fani Willis?

It culminated with a confession by one defendant’s lawyer and a Georgia judge weighing whether to issue a protective order placing restrictions on how defendants can disseminate materials they receive in discovery.

“In being transparent with the court and to make sure that nobody else gets blamed for what happened — and so that I can go to sleep well tonight — Judge, I did release those videos to one outlet,” said Jonathan Miller, an attorney for defendant Misty Hampton. “And in all candor, I need the court to know that.”

Miller’s admission capped a whirlwind series of developments that began Monday, when footage surfaced of proffer sessions the four defendants who pleaded guilty — ex-Trump lawyers Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, plus former Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall — participated in as part of their deals with state prosecutors.

Their confessions, published first by ABC News and the Washington Post, bolster the narrative laid out in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s 98-page indictment that Trump led the charge on efforts to subvert Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results in his favor.

Meta To Would-Be Advertisers:  Pay To Play Lie.  Truth no longer a requirement:

Facebook, under the premise of so-called free speech, has long allowed politicians to lie on its platforms.

But after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, the company appeared to issue somewhat of a mea culpa. Perhaps, as my colleague Pema Levy wrote at the time, Meta executives were finally willing to recognize that “the balance between a newsworthy politician and a dangerous one had tilted too far.” Thus began a series of policy changes aimed at reducing disinformation and polarization.

But the results of the 2022 midterm elections, when election-denying candidates generally got crushed, prompted a change in attitude. Meta, according to new reporting from the Wall Street Journal, apparently perceived those losses at the ballot as permission to loosen up. Today, the newspaper explained, the company quietly decided to allow political ads falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen to appear on the platform once again, on free-speech grounds. The updated policy, which specifically pertains to past elections, prohibits advertisers from questioning ongoing and future elections. But it’s a strange caveat considering a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, one that will surely resurrect the greatest hits of 2020 fiction, is all but certain.

“Meta’s lax policy on political ads—a policy which has sadly been in effect for many months—allows for weaponization and heightened disinformation on Meta’s products,” Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the media watchdog organization Free Press, told Mother Jones. “Now is an urgent moment for Meta and other platforms to do more, not less, for better and safer user experiences, namely by investing in greater trust and safety and content moderation staff to robustly enforce lies on their platforms.”

While what passes for Delaware news media breathlessly ask whether the Delaware Supreme Court will overturn KMG’s conviction, our readers and we have pretty much now solved the mystery of BHL’s finances.  Fact:  She and her husband took over $300K in donor dollars and funneled them to their own private bank accounts.  Fact:  She and her husband refused to turn those bank records over to the campaign finance specialist who they brought in, which impelled her to quit the campaign.  Fact:  She and her husband (who was also her campaign treasurer since her start in politics) distorted the campaign expenditure reports to make it appear that the money they had funneled to themselves had been used on campaign-related activities.  Fact:  There was never a ‘forensic audit’ conducted on their reports, as BHL had promised.  Fact: BHL has refused to make the so-called exonerating audit public, has refused to make the bank statements public, and has refused to make herself available to answer questions.  Fact: Pretty much everybody who retains a shred of integrity has long since abandoned her campaign.  Conclusion: Her campaign is dead.  Only question is when does she pull the plug, and whether it comes before either the Department Of Elections and/or the AG’s office pulls the plug for her.

Man, this, IMO, is how a blog can work.  We don’t have the resources of a news operation.  But, in this case, we had quite a few of you who had information and who now have basically filled in all the blanks.  You have helped to ensure that someone who is unfit to serve as Governor never gets to serve as Governor.  Thanks to all of you.

What do you want to talk about?