DL Open Thread: Friday, August 9, 2024
Just A Note Before We Go…Onto Something Other Than The Attempted Swift-Boating Of Tim Walz. Two notes, actually.
The guy who swift-boated John Kerry is the same guy trying to pull the same dirty trick on Walz:
The common denominator in both efforts: Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita.
LaCivita played a key role in the political advocacy group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which ran the TV ad campaign questioning Kerry’s military service. It’s a playbook that the Trump campaign appears to be re-running after Vice President Kamala Harris tapped Walz, a 24-year veteran of the Army National Guard, as her running mate.
The hits on Walz’s military service align with Trump’s penchant for personal attacks against his political opponents, while also harkening back to the effort to sully Kerry’s military record two decades ago.
LaCivita even connected the two in an interview with RealClearPolitics on Wednesday. “Birds of a feather,” he said of Walz and Kerry, “will be tarred together.”
Somebody’s high on his own supply. The second note? Guess who underwrote the so-called ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’. That would be one Harlan Crow:
On Thursday, amid the swiftboating of newly-minted Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, The New Yorker’s award-winning Jane Mayer wrote: “Remember when John Kerry was Swiftboated by Chris LaCivita who is doing it to Tim Walz now? Guess who funded it? Harlan Crow, the billionaire who has been lavishing freebies on Clarence Thomas.”
Back in 2004, that massively-funded multi-million dollar machine, or “millions of dollars in shadowy contributions,” as New York Magazine explains it, spent $22,565,360, according to Open Secrets. (That’s about $34 million in current U.S. dollars.)
One of Swift Boat’s top donors was conservative GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, the Texas billionaire whose financial relationship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been the subject of numerous bombshell investigative reports.
I watched about 2/3rds of that Trump ‘press conference’ yesterday. Other than the fact that he surrendered and says he now will, in fact, debate Kamala Harris on ABC on September 10, the big news was his meandering. Oh, and his obsession with crowd size. Bragged that he drew 88,000 in South Carolina. Turns out (I’m not making this up) that he attended a bowl game there that drew the crowd. Says that his January 6 crowd was bigger than the DC crowd for MLK’s I Have A Dream Speech. Lost his train of thought, appeared uninterested. Unfit to be President. But you already knew that. OK, can’t resist, just one tidbit from the press conference:
At times, he did not hide his visible frustration. “What a stupid question,” he said, when asked why Harris was campaigning more frequently than he was.
“I am doing tremendous amounts of taping here. We have commercials at a level I don’t think anybody has ever done before,” he said.
That can take a toll on a guy.
OK, on to other topics. I promise.
Know Your Newest RWNJ’s: Meet Bronze Age Pervert, Raw Egg Nationalist, Mencius Moldbug, and others. The names may be humorous, but what they do is dangerous.
Israel Holding Palestinians In Torture Camps? Is this their version of ‘an eye for an eye’?:
Israel is facing mounting pressure from the international community and human rights groups as more evidence surfaces of the military’s severe punishment of Palestinians held in what are being described as torture camps, including a notorious prison in the desert where soldiers have for months been accused of sexual abuse.
The Israeli Supreme Court said Wednesday that it will consider a petition from rights groups to close down Sde Teiman, the main military facility holding Palestinians captured in large-scale raids during the past 10 months of Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Whistleblowers and dozens of Palestinian captives who have since been released told the rights groups and media outlets of the inhumane treatment they faced while incarcerated with no formal charges, no trial and often no legal counsel.
There’s that pesky Israeli Supreme Court again. Bibi hatches another scheme to abolish it in 3–2–1.
Torture In Prison Not Just For Bibi. Texas roasts prisoners to death:
With Texas reaching its summer temperature peak over the next few days, the complaint says that prisoners suffer 100F-plus heat on a daily basis. On average, 14 people die of extreme heat in their cells annually, the plaintiffs say – a figure the state disputes.
The legal action aims to force the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) to air condition all its prisons, about two-thirds of which currently lack AC. As a result, about 85,000 prisoners across dozens of correctional institutions are estimated to be at risk of heat stroke, exhaustion, nausea and other heat-related conditions, even to the point of death.
It’s long past time for the Feds step in and make Texas honor the Constitution, at least.
Carney and Potter Engage In First Public Forum. Read, see if there’s any meat there. Comment.
One more thing: every time I see that BHL ad where the very first thing mentioned is that she’s the endorsed candidate of the Delaware Democratic Party, I am reminded of what an unmitigated hack Betsy Maron is. Yes, I like John Daniello. Yes, I like Betsy. But, her steering of this endorsement, and her refusal to reconsider in light of all the ethical and criminal findings and allegations against Bethany, is political malpractice of the highest order. She can’t vacate the premises soon enough.
What do you want to talk about?
The whole GOP playbooks since George Bush I has been “We know our candidates and ideas are hated by voters so we need to smear our opponents and make them seem slightly worse.”
The really fucked part is that it continues to work.
BHL’s PAC- People for a Healthy Delaware- just filed its campaign finance report: https://cfrs.elections.delaware.gov/Public/FiledReports?FileName=CampaignFinanceReport_Prelim_465897_1223_65236feb-e392-418e-94d1-89e129b2f5bc.pdf
This PAC is supposed to be independent, but earlier this year, El Som pointed out that this PAC was paying for Bethany’s campaign staff, contractors, and other expenses: https://delawareliberal.net/2024/01/24/the-little-pac-that-could/
And now, all of a sudden, the PAC isn’t paying Bethany’s campaign bills anymore.
Good job, El Som.
Well, she’s got at least two other PAC’s picking up the tab…plus I’ve NEVER seen DSEA send out so many mailers on one candidate’s behalf.
BTW, the DSEA Executive Director is one Jeff Taschner. You may remember him as one-half of the team that lost a primary to GiGi Gonzalez a few cycles back–and then deliberately screwed Gonzalez, which brought us the Original Michael Smith. That seat would be Democratic right now were it not for the Taschners.
He and his wife are cynical operators in the cutthroat world of the Delaware Way. Yes, his wife was a cop.
It is beyond my understanding how someone who engages in such sleazy tactics heads up the DSEA.
Will someone please enlighten me?
She doesn’t have any campaign staff. So that’s one way to not pay any bills. Is this the budget smoothing we were talking about?
Btw. In case you weren’t counting. She’s on her fourth campaign manager (her driver from her official office), in about 10 months.
DSEA is a wholly owned subsidiary of DSEA staff, the establishment component of DSEA. Forget about members and their dues. Staff hail to the establishment call…turns my stomach.
Jeffrey Taschner, head of the DSEA, has, according to this bio, never, you know, taught:
https://leadershipdelaware.org/teams/jeffrey-m-tashner/
Shouldn’t that be a requirement at least?
Of course they aren’t paying anymore, they gave their money to Dem Lt. Gov’s group, so let’s see their report and see if they are the ones now paying her staff.
Again, I will ask, why did the Dept. of Elections not even bat an eye at the same person being paid at the exact same time by a campaign and a PAC supporting that candidate? Not to mention the DE dem party brought that same person in to “teach” others about campaign finance…
Also I saw the huge $100,000 contribution from the NEW JERSEY Laborors PAC.. Huh? So, what George Norcross is diddling down here in DE now??? That is definitely taking corruption to a WHOLE new level.
Not surprising that George Norcross is getting involved on behalf of BHL.
Her campaign is basically at this point the various Laborer’s Union PACs, (they are the group that convinced her to stay in the race last year once her illegal campaign behavior first became public).
See today the just released “Labor” policies. My guess is that Jim M. wrote this word for word and she didn’t even read it.
https://www.bethanyforde.com/issues
It’s all in for the Philly/ Jersey Building Trades Union agenda or bust for BHL at this point!
Yes, guess we shouldn’t be surprised at the involvement of an indicted George Norcross with BHL’s campaign at this point, but this is really just a campaign that seems to get slimier each time a bandage is pulled away
BHL endorsement video by John Carney just came up in my feed. 31% beats 25%. Can one of the other two drop out already?