Illegal Misoginistic Email Pins PACman Blumenthal (More)

CT Democrat Senate hopeful Richard Blumenthal is literally punching himself out with disasters pouring in all seams.

In yesterday's blog, I reported on the denying of WWE fans the right to vote if they wear WWE apparel. What I neglected to report on was the other simultaneous unravelings by Blumenthal.

The Hungry PAC-man
At the beginning of his race Blumenthal boasted in an MSNBC interview: "I've never taken PAC money and I have rejected all special interest money because I have stood strong and taken legal action against many of those special interests." Yet Daniela Altimari in a Hartford Courant article Friday attests Blumenthal's latest FEC filings prove the exact opposite:

Blumenthal's latest filings with the Federal Election Commission show he's taken thousands of dollars in PAC money to fund his U.S. Senate run in the third-quarter of 2010 alone. Among those opening up their checkbooks are political action committees representing air traffic controllers, steel workers, wine and beer wholesalers and rural letter carriers.

Altimari continues naming names of PACs of all kinds including social, labor, insurance, and business PACs:

Most of the special interest money flowed from Washington, naturally....[including] a $1,370 donation this quarter from from the Planned Parenthood PAC, and $5,000 from NARAL Pro Choice America PAC....In addition to labor PACS, which were prominent on Blumenthal's donor list, he received money from the American Crystal Sugar PAC ($5,000), the New York Life Insurance PAC ($2,500) and the AFLAC PAC ($2,000)...

Someone ought to ask Blumenthal if there was any PAC contribution he turned down. At this point I'd rather put my trust in a Mexican coyote that this dishonest corruptible.


"Worst of WWE + women photos"
Perhaps the worst story of them all to break Friday was Ben Smith at the Politico who posted the following email from Blumenthal press staffer Marcy Stech to seven other Blumenthal aides and the State Democratic Party regarding trying to dig up misogynistic (or, women-hating; at least I spelled it right!) photos to hit "LM" (Linda McMahon):

Subject: Worst of WWE + women photos
Date:Fri, 22 Oct 2010 13:50:
From: [Marcy Stech]
To: Catherine Algeri, Pat McHugh, Brian Farnkoff, Dan Morrocco, Jon Donnenberg, Ty Matsdorf, Kate Hansen

Hey all — Grossman is looking for mysoginistic photos of women and WWE. Planned Parenthood wants to hit LM hard on it.What do we got?

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

With the liberal Hartford Courant calling this email which points to coordination between the Blumenthal campaign and Planned Parenthood (a Blumenthal PAC contributor noted above) "at the very least embarrassing and at very the worst, potentially illegal" it is a wonder the Courant chose to endorse this candidate who engages in potentially illegal acts. Keep in mind Blumenthal is the Attorney General of Connecticut or the state's top legal cop. If anyone should be held to the highest standards, it is Blumenthal.

Blumenthal is an embarrassment. He has no idea how to create a job. He lies. And now he engages in potentially illegal acts to win campaigns? How could anyone in their right mind vote for this crook? Didn't Connecticut learn its lesson from Dodd that there is a major corruption problem with the Democratic Party in Connecticut?

Come on, Nutmeggers: you deserve better than Blumenthal. Heck, the whole country deserves better than Blumenthal.

++++ More:

Similar to Blumenthal's PAC fib, Barney Frank (Dodd's House Counterpart) admits to breaking his pledge not to take money from banks receiving TARP funds. (Boston Herald, h/t Quickwit)

CTSen: Integrity of McMahon vs. Blumenthal Lies

I'm not a big Pro-Wrestling fan. Not that I have anything against Pro-Wrestling in general (although all forms of entertainment can be packaged in forms appropriate for different audiences, some not appropriate for children or myself). Suffice to say Connecticut Senate candidate Linda McMahon's 30-year WWE experience from a purely wrestling perspective for me is neither a pro nor a con.

What I love about McMahon is her sense of taking her WWE business acumen to town for CT. She knows that the Obama philosophy of spending one's way out of debt is a bunch of horse-dung. And that Obama-touted candidate Blumenthal is a Chris Dodd re-tread with respect to this crucial area of fiscal responsibility. Haven't Nutmeggers borne enough of this fiscal nonsense and irresponsibility?

McMahon is largely self-financing with both her and her opponent Blumenthal vowing not to take PAC money. Knowing the deceitful history of CT politicians, I was quite skeptical about the Blumenthal vow (below).

A review of the Federal Elections Commission site for available donations from the first two quarters of 2010 (Jan-Jun) shows that Blumenthal has received nearly $500,000 in PAC money from 158 PACs including:

• A myriad of union groups including the Teamsters
• Several big businesses and insurance companies such as Comcast, General Dynamics, AFLAC, and Blue Shield of California
• Planned Parenthood

Surprisingly from a candidate that purports to have "never taken PAC money", less than 15% of Blumenthal's PAC donors were even based in Connecticut!

Not knowing McMahon, I was also somewhat skeptical about her promise to not take PAC money and to not take individual contributions over $100. I was very pleasantly surprised to see she had with honor kept true to her word. If you look at her page on the FEC site under the "Other Committees Contributions" line (this is where PAC money is listed) the line is $0. Furthermore, if you examine her FEC individual contributions list, no one has contributed over $100.

I have examined several FEC documents this season and McMahon's documents are impeccable and prominently stand out in a positive way. McMahon has proven to me, an out-of-stater, she is a candidate of integrity and will keep her promises of restoring fiscal discipline to our nation.

To further contrast the integrity of McMahon vs the apparent pathological lying of Blumental let us turn back our memories to the spring of this year when Blumenthal purported to have served in Vietnam. The story broke in the liberal New York Times and even progressive MSNBC covered Blumenthal's lie:

Although I don't share some of McMahon's moderate social values, she is against partial-birth abortion and hasn't taken money from Planned Parenthood which is a step in the right direction over Blumenthal. Thus in light of her strong commitment to restoring sanity to our financial house, I am pleased to announce that for Connecticut Senate in 2010 Linda McMahon earns a strong Nacilbupera endorsement.

Tim Bridgewater: Master Mr. Niceguy

In yesterday's post we concluded with the following:

"There are plenty of Bridgewater faults and much to be concerned about; the problem is that if you blog something negative of Bridgewater, the Bridgewater folks all pat you on the head and think of you as their next convert.... We remain undecided in this race [between Lee and Bridgewater] as we have been..."

Tonight the Bridgewater camp tweeted the following:

"@nacilbupera Thank you. I am honored to have earned your vote yesterday. Appreciate your support."

The problem with the message tweet is that we have never given our support to either candidate. Indeed if we do so in the future, we will do so first on this blog. Being quite undecided as to whom to vote for on June 22nd, on Saturday we decided to start following both Mr. Bridgewater and Mr. Lee's tweets; indeed the measured time lapsed between following both could be measured in seconds. Many media and citizens follow not necessarily because they support or endorse a candidate, but because they want to be kept informed as to what's going on; such was the case with Nacilbupera.

While we're confident it would be easy to get the tweet corrected, the campaign masters at the Bridgewater camp would likely fall over backwards in apology for their error making us feel even more generous towards the Bridgewater campaign.

As Nacilbupera, back in October on our own efforts we launched the first major campaign against Bridgewater pointing out his FEC rule violation which got us a plug in the Salt Lake City Weekly and national blogger Riehl World View (not that we give a hoot for fame but we're small enough that we knew it would take more than our efforts alone to bring this issue up--so we're grateful for the coverage). As it turns out, the FEC really looks the other way on this rule below a $5000 threshold and we were unable to find evidence of violation of that $5K mark. We are finding other candidates across the nation seemingly guilty of the same charge so we'll give Bridgewater a legal break although ethically it did convey to the voters you aren't as honest as Abe.

The reason we bring this up is not only to clarify the record, but to provide further evidence to our Master Mr. Niceguy label of Tim Bridgewater: the campaign never spoke a word about the incident. In political strategy, this is of course the correct thing to do when the source has a voice so small it's drowned out; but Bridgewater could have come out swinging and lambasted us with his ego aflame--yet he chose not to. This doesn't seem the same Bridgewater in "fiery, bare-knuckled campaigns" against Swallow for Utah's 2nd Congressional seat.

There are early signs that Lee is learning the Mr. Niceguy game, but in 2010 Bridgewater is the Master Yoda.

++++ Followup 6/12:

If you like this article, try my one today entitled "Master Mr. Niceguy Goes Postal"