National Democraps still refuse to address the Zionist element in their room

After the DNC's 2026 meeting last week, many attendees said Israel isn't on their constituent radar. They mentioned these three:

But party leaders say once they’re back home, the conversation shifts dramatically. In interviews, many state party chairs, candidates and elected officials did not name AIPAC or Israel funding as a top-three concern they’re hearing from rank-and-file voters. Instead, it’s the nuts and bolts of the economy that are weighing down their constituencies, they say, with the cost of housing and food and the availability of health care all top of mind.

Really? Inflation isn't caused in part by high gas prices caused by a war against Iran waged at the instigation of Israel? And, at least part of your grassroots constituents know that.

I mean, later on, the story even directly calls out national Democraps' lie by omission: 

During recent focus groups observed by NBC News (produced by Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago), Democrats in Michigan and Maine voiced significant criticism of Israel’s government around its conduct in the war with Hamas in Gaza, with a handful calling Israel’s actions “genocide.”

The lies were called out more explicitly by one of their own Congresscritters, for doorknob's sake! THIS:

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., said she polled her own district after the contentious March primary, and her internal survey showed 80% of respondents had heard of AIPAC. “It’s higher than some members of Congress’ name ID in their own districts,” she said. 

Ramirez, of Chicago, said the average voter in her district is mostly concerned about the cost of gas and groceries as well as immigration enforcement overreach. But the “more informed voter,” she said, is agitating against any Democratic alliance with AIPAC. She said DNC leaders would be wise to reconsider how its handling the issue, particularly as it attempts to cultivate a younger generation of leaders.

Denial is a river that doesn't just flow through 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I guess. Neither is peeing on someone's leg and telling them it's raining. 

It's called gaslighting, like that by the Democratic Majority for Israel that I told to fuck off on Substack:

“We’re pleased that the DNC Rules Committee rejected a set of divisive, anti-Israel resolutions. These measures would be a gift to Republicans, would further fracture our party, and do nothing to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to peace," Democratic Majority for Israel president and CEO Brian Romick said in a statement. "The DNC and party advocates need to keep focus where it belongs — on building a united Democratic Party that can win back Congress this November.”

 It's "divisive" because Zionist genocidalists make it so while appealing to duopoly tribalism.

There you are. And, it's why I said "duopoly exit" on Substack while telling Romick et al to fuck off.

"Pergressuve" Dems will start fellating David Hogg, if they aren't already

The DNC removed the fauxgressive from his VP position last night.

But, but, he wanted to undercut traditional Democrats.

With what? 

More of the same.

He won't challenge Zionism.

He won't challenge Nat-Sec Nutsacks on Ukraine.

His "Leaders we Deserve" on their one touted success? Palestinian-Americans think that Maxwell Frost is a sellout. 

Where does Hogg stand on climate change? Stronger unionism? National healthcare?

In the shitter.

Per A Current Affair, he backs Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi. Nuff ced. 

Well, no, per my rhetorical questions? Let's quote that piece:

Despite this rhetoric, Leaders We Deserve currently offers no policies on its website. There’s no mention of Medicare for All, no Green New Deal, no commitment to organized labor, no mention of campaign finance reform, and no stance on Gaza1—just vague reformism and pop-up ads asking for money. “Sure, he has said he is for gun laws, healthcare for all, and free college,” Yasmin Nair writes of Hogg. “[B]ut there is scant evidence that he thinks all of this is tied to a political agenda: it’s all a cynical move to elect people into office.”

There you are.

Wait, no; this footnote at the bottom of the piece, the "1" in the block quote above, explicated:

Notably, Hogg has said almost nothing about the genocide in Gaza—the most urgent moral crisis of our time—apart from a meandering, nervous response when pressed by Bill Maher to condemn student pro-Palestine protesters. In a Rolling Stone interview, he acknowledged that Gaza was “emblematic of the fact that people felt like we were not listening to them—that we didn’t care.” But it’s still strange that someone who became an activist after surviving a school shooting would have so little to say about entire universities being leveled by U.S.-made bombs.

THERE you are. 

I already know this; that's why my questions are rhetorical. 

That said, that ACA piece has its own problems, starting with it running Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Justice Democrats up the flagpole and saluting them. 

#DNCFraudLawsuit news with various updates: I'm glad Jared Beck ain't my lawyer

Maybe, like Actual Flatulus, I mean Actual Flatticus Chris Chopin, he's OK with divorces and other family law.

But, in the case of federal civil law, he's ... well, he's a fucking idiot.

I'm referring to the DNC Fraud Lawsuit. I'm not a lawyer myself, so I couldn't tell you whether the DNC's actions during the 2016 presidential primaries are civilly actionable or not, let alone whether there's a reasonable chance of proving actual civil fraud.

Update, Oct. 29, 2019: This suit is dead, dead, dead on appeal at the 11th Circuit. I highly doubt it will be reheard en banc, and the Supremes will certainly not grant cert. The judges say, affirming district court, that the plaintiffs lack standing, primarily because they cannot trace any alleged financial injury to the defendants. Specifically, the court notes that while the donors list specific dollar amounts of donations, they don't list dates. Therefore, they can't prove that Debbie Wasserman Schultz et al injured them because donations and DWS statement dates can't be correlated.

The appellate court, like the district court, also says that plaintiffs do not state what particular statements defrauded or otherwise injured them, and how. Thus, between that and the DNC being a non-profit and the plaintiffs not being "consumers," they don't have a statutory cause, either, the court said.

And that, friends is Jared Beck in a nutshell IMO.

Oh, for additional fun, the appellate court told the district court to dismiss most claims with prejudice.

I DO know, though, reading the DNC's response to Beck's appeal of the federal district court's dismissal of the case, that, if the DNC is civilly actionable, it ain't gonna be by Jared Beck. (Sidebar: Any lawyer who puts "Esq" after his or her name, per his Twitter profile, strikes me as pretentious. And the older I get, the more I hate pretentiousness. Eddie Stephens, Twitter lawyer of April Deming, I'm looking at you too. And people more famous, with no connection to Flatty.)

Setting aside the fact that him spouting Seth Rich conspiracy theories undercuts his credibility (it does, and they ARE conspiracy theories and on March 14 his parents sued Fox and here is the official filing), he does appear to have failed to established "standing." And as the DNC notes, on both the issue of standing and First Amendment issues (freedom of association, mainly), the Supreme Court has set the bar pretty high. (And yes, I Googled a couple of the cases mentioned in the response.) This is an Olympic-level high jump bar, and Jared Beck is at the high school level if that.

Further undercutting the standing issue is that nobody sued the Iowa Democratic Party when it refused to do a recount. Caucuses involve not just voters, but more than primaries, people who hold actual Democratic Party positions.

Bernie the "Indy," good sheepdogger that he was, didn't sue Iowa Dems himself. (He did join, though not initially file, a lawsuit against the Arizona Secretary of State, and other legal actions. But that was against the SoS in Arizona, and likewise in other states; nothing against the Arizona Dem Party or any other.) Nor did anybody holding an office of say, president of the Polk County Democratic Party in Iowa.

The DNC's special agreement on hiring with the Clinton campaign, as documented by Donna Brazile,  and discussed in detail elsewhere, certainly would give Sanders standing, should he choose to sue. Don't hold your breath.

Update, Aug. 22: The Becks won't give up, trying to tie this suit to the DNC suit against Russia. Frankly, I think the DNC suit has little more legal validity, and even if you do win, how do you collect?

Update, Oct. 5: Looks like the Becks will get gifted a blind-hog acorn after all. The 11th Circuit will hear their appeal on Dec. 11.

Now, a sidebar issue or two.

==

First, smaller one.

If the Democratic Party, via its national organization the DNC and its affiliated (or franchised) state parties, were a dues-paying membership party, THEN, donors to Bernie Sanders who were also dues-paying members might be presented as having standing. (Sidebar: Even without the dues-paying, the fact that Bernie has that "I" after his last name as a senator further undercuts Beck's case, as I see it.)

This is an argument for the Green Party to go this way. It's also an argument for a related issue, to stop the overhyping of the "decentralization" plank of the Ten Key Values and to make the Green Party national a national party, not a 51st state party. Would indirectly help keep the Bob Fitrakises of the world from making the Ohio Green Party etc. into private domains.

==

Wholly separate What the Fuck sidebar: Beck is getting close to "drama actor" territory on the Parkland school shooting, specifically with David Hogg. See here and here.

And, I screenshotted that first link, just in case:

You had about zero credibility with the Seth Rich conspiracy theories. Now this. And, I'm sure DNC legal counsel is reading your Twitter feed, too. (You also didn't post an editing or apologizing Tweet, even though you later Tweeted that the school's surveillance was on a ... wait for it, wait for it ...

29-minute delay, which precisely undercuts you.

I said on Twitter last week that when Flatty groupie and self-anointed wingman ShirtLost DumbShit Zack Haller started promoting the "drama actor" angle, that Flatty surely wouldn't sink that low. Seeing Beck engage in this, too, I retract that; maybe Flatty would have gone down this road, too.

Beyond that, Beck also self-delusionally thinks the DNC or somebody might off him, too.

That said, and getting back to the pretentiousness, this is another argument for a Harvard degree (both he and Elizabeth are Harvard Law) being worth bullshit other than as a resume marketing tool. And, along with Preznit Kumbaya, he also proves that being editor of the Harvard Law Review doesn't necessarily mean everything.

(Sidebar within the sidebar: His isn't the only pretentiousness in all of this. The pushing of the suit by Gnu Media sites like "Disobedient Media" is another.)

Per Beck's currently pinned Tweet, I wonder if he filed the suit to gin up publicity for the Berniebro book that he's getting published.

Given that he's now lying about being "banned from Twitter," (as his spiritual quasi-mentor Alex Jones lied about being banned from YouTube) I wouldn't put anything past him. (He actually came back to Twitter on his own in late May, three months after I first wrote this.)

Further update on that? Beck said he was going to go to Gab, the Twitter alternative largely known for having a membership that largely starts with wingnuts and goes further right from there to the alt-right.

Yes, there may be some less winger people than that there, but they're a minority and that doesn't whitewash Gab's reputation. (When your icon looks like a Pepe the Fascist Frog knockoff, what else is there to say?)

And, he didn't have to go there. He could stay on Twitter (he may decide to keep a secondary presence) or he could go to another Twitter alternative besides Gab (and other alternatives do exist).

Oh, and that a winger like Hard Bastard is defending Beck on Twitter only confirms that Gab, and its general angle, is his true home. Surprised that ShirtLost DumbShit Haller hasn't headed there too. And, back to the dead and "sainted" mastermind behind these people? It again raises suspicion in my mind that Actual Flatticus, aka Chris Chopin, was a kind of double agent.

And, he's a 9/11 truther, too, it seems.

#twintowers "The irony for a country so determined to "honor the memory" of those who perished on 9/11 is that we dishonor them so thoroughly when we mindlessly repeat the obvious official lies about what happened that day."
Jared Beck pic.twitter.com/CfL7QxaNxL

— Neil (@567Neil) September 11, 2023

Shock me.
==

Back to the original thread.

If a Harvard Law SCL grad and Review editor can't write a complaint better than this, I agree with the DNC — he's forfeited the chance to amend.

Hell, a proto-conspiracy theory of mine, that he did this deliberately, makes more sense than his conspiracy theories.

That would be for two reasons.

One, perhaps due to some past legal expertise, he knew he couldn't win a suit like this, so he made sure to screw it up from the start.

Two, maybe someone paid him to tank.

Of course, some of this may parallel Ty Clevenger's legal actions vis-a-vis Seth Rich and Seth's family — stirring the legal shit pot just to gin up conspiracy theories (and fame and money). Speaking of, Beck appeared with Clevenger at some conference called MAGA Rising. Both were featured speakers.

Donna Brazile runs the bus over Hillary Clinton — on the way to the bank

Who left the tire tracks on Hillary?

No, former temporary Democratic National Committee interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile did not find some new fount of honesty when she spoke to Politico and left tire tracks over Hillary Clinton and her campaign. If she had, she would have said something a week ago about the hacks that Tom Perez selected to various DNC positions last month.

Instead, in politics, the first rule is always follow the money.

And the money is, in this case, sales of the book she is flogging, in part through a pseudo tell-all.

(Speaking of, feel free to vote in one or both of the "biggest sheepdogger" polls at upper right of this post.)

In that sense, Brazile is simply being true to the Democratic Party that she briefly helped steer into presidential defeat.

I mean, this is the person who admitted to getting advance information about questions for a Democratic primary town hall, and a second debate, and passing that on to the Clinton camp. And, it took her 5 months after Wikileaks said that for her to admit it. Sure, it's possible she's a truth-telling horse whisperer driven by the highest ethics values.

Or, it's possible she's still just another grifter. Or Just.Another.Politician.™, non-elected division.

Also note that her March admission date on the questions tip-off? Her book was surely already in progress by then.

Another "tell"? She said she started crying AFTER ending the phone call with Sanders. Ergo, nobody to deny.

As such, she did drive that bus over Hillary.

And, given new Hillbot pushback, who deserves a bus to be driven over her more?

That pushback includes this self-contradicting piece from NBC.

Alex Seitz-Wald, adding to reputation as a Clintonista hack, claims that the agreement only went into place for the general election. However, lower in the story, it says the DNC had to hire a communications director from one of two Hillary-vetted candidates no later than Sept. 1, 2015. That's LONG before the general. (And, I'm sure that somebody in the upper circles of Hillary 2016 sent him the memo behind the piece as soon as they saw Prima Donna's Politico interview.)

Points two and three in the full memo of the agreement between Hillary for America and the DNC specify further Clinton control over other DNC hirings, without any "general election" timetable. There's more there to refudiate Seitz-Wald.

Point 4 would appear to indicate that state Dem parties getting an offer to partner with Hillary Fucked America had to do so on an exclusive basis. If Bernie had decided to sign off on a similar agreement it would have been for crumbs only, even if the Clinton one was not exclusive.

As for Seitz-Wald claiming to have a smoking gun undercutting Prima Donna? There's Mack truck-sized loopholes in this paragraph.

Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC's obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary.

Oh, sure ... forcing a Hillbot communications director down the DNC throat, and giving Team Clinton vetting over other hires? No "construing" that the barn door is being shut after the partiality horses have already been stabled inside, to twist an old cliche.

Julian Assange lovingly confirms timeline issues.

Kein Silverstein confirms that Bernie got no such offer himself, along with other details.

Who dat? It's Donna and the cash bus, schooling Hillary.

Given that she's far and away from the first to drive it over Debbie Wasserman Schultz, no photoshopping needed there, for Brazile to run her over.

However, Prima Donna's head-fake "tell all" does raise one question.

We know Dear Leader thought Dancing with the Schultz was little more than bupkis. Brazile may really think so, personal pecuniary reasons aside.

Hillz allegedly, while being kinder to her than Barackabama, didn't hang the moon on her either.

So why the hell was she running the DNC that long? I mean, Dear Leader kept her there 5-plus years. Barack and Hillary, as well as Donna, all three, will probably keep lips zipped.

The Intercept offers part of the answer. Dear Leader had Organizing for America, his own grifting HQ, so with both Kaine and DWS, he kicked the DNC to the curb.

So, I don't totally blame Hillary for actually wanting to help the DNC.

However, as Ken notes, there were other ways of doing that. Like, No. 1, scheduling more debates.

So will the pious Democratic factota now lining up to join in at running that bus over Dancing with the Schultz as well as Clinton. That's even though, between her and Barackabama, Congressional Dems, after going  over a cliff in 2010 under Dear Leader plus Tim Kaine at the DNC, made but a slight recovery in 2012, and slid lower than 2010 in the 2014 midterms. Maybe Barackabama kept her there as an easy scapegoat.

Update, and speaking of them and Clinton-Kaine? Prima Donna also sez that she contemplated a coup of sorts, replacing them with Biden-Booker. First, who had the power to try to do this? Second, the idea that this could even be seriously contemplated should be instant ammo for the appeal of the DNC fraud lawsuit. Third, Booker probably would have tried to poison Biden.

Irony alert: The Hillbot pushback against "Patsey the Slave" claims that Brazile got bamfoozled by Putin propaganda.

And she is right that Dear Leader, along with Ms. Cattle Futures and Dancing with the Schultz, were three "titanic egos."

At the same time, per that new link, the idea that Prima Donna took over the DNC "reluctantly"? Uh, sure. Second rule in politics? "Follow the power after you follow the money."

Speaking of? Per Ken, Brazile retweeted this Tweet that claims the insider deal between HFA and the DNC had zero election effect. Upshit? If she's in it for the book money, she'll get it. If she's in it for the power, she's burned too many bridges in too many directsions with insiders now.

Sidebar: Hillary Clinton not only ran a suck-ass campaign, she had with her a suck-ass former DNC head as her Veep nominee. And, as much an insider eminence as Stanley Greenberg talked about the suck-ass campaign in as much an insider spot as The American Prospect. I mean, older members of the party establishment should have looked back to Hillarycare in 1993-94 to see she had a tin ear for retail politics.

And, yet, this all went on. The Democratic Party is both inept and corrupt at the national level. Kaine/Barackabama let slide the 50-state strategy of Howard Duck Dean, to the degree it was successful. And, Pelosi and lieutenants in the House didn't pick up the ball when it was clear that Preznit Kumbaya was doing his own mellifluous version of triangulation. Plenty of blame to go around.

OK, we're done with questions and commentary?

Wait, another question.

How did Elizabeth Warren not avoid getting semi-pinned down by Jake Tapper? Oh, this is a two-parter. How did Tapper not ask her if her answer wasn't talking about the horses after Tom Perez opened the barn door last month?

Speaking of, Tom Perez sure learned well from his former boss, Barackabama. Almost word for word, "moving forward not backward," when asked about Dancing with the Schultz.

And, one other question.

If Hillary's campaign had THAT BAD of a burn rate, doesn't this reinforce just how "lucky" she got with her cattle futures?

Actually, one other question.

"Shattered" was a fake tell-all, but as told to, not by a player.

"Hacks" is now a fake tell-all by an insider. Sorry, Stan Greenberg, but it didn't go that much deeper than what the MSM already had, and the authors started with the Putin Did It line.

Will we get a more real tell-all at some point?

And, if you don't believe me on "Shattered"?

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan   Allen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Inside baseball book strikes out in first at bat.

That strikeout occurs at the end of the introduction.

The authors talk about a "Kremlin-based campaign" against her and the failure of the media to get Trump's tax return while it "scrutinized her every move."

The first is factually incorrect. The second is narratively incorrect.

The most we know the Kremlin did right now was to try to hack into Iowa and Arizona state voting offices. Other activities believed to have been done by Russian individuals have not been tied to the Kremlin. As in, could be individual hackers, etc. More important, yet, the best intelligence indicated the DNC email leaks given to Wikileaks had their physical transmission done in the US and not over the Internet. More than that we can't say for certain, but it seems pretty clear no Russkies were involved.

The media? Wrote plenty of stories about Trump's taxes. Remember David Cay Johnston? I do. Wrote plenty of other stories about him. That said, it's not a CRIME for a presidential candidate to hold tax returns and, if it were, the media is not a grand jury or a district attorney.

The rest of the book generally slouches toward Gomorrah from there. The first time Bernie's "white liberal" backers is used of him, it's semi-sneering. The book doesn't cover either Clinton's OR Sanders' failures in foreign policy issues. The problematic nature of the Clinton Foundation, and Hillary Clinton's lies about donors to it — including lies to President Obama — get unmentioned.

And, even the inside baseball doesn't have that much new stuff for regular campaign watchers, especially those who saw a moderate variant of 2008 repeating itself.

The book in general reads as clearly coming from an inside-the-Beltway pundit duo.

==

And, don't believe a fake-reform, fake-improve-all book, either. Especially not when it comes from a guy who set up a totally non-transparent think tank, foundation, and likely eventual lobbying shop. Instead, take note that some of his fakery was called out 30 years ago.

Add in that real Democrat Bernie became part of a suit against the state of Arizona for not running a primary well — which theoretically hurt Republicans, too — but refused to sue the Iowa Democratic Party for putting its thumb on the scale for Clinton in the Democratic caucus.

Oh, and that fake-reform book? Reviewed it for you too.

Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In by Bernie Sanders
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Don't get sheepdogged

Several problems with this book.

One is that Bernie's a real Democrat, and has been a real Democrat for 25 years, despite the "I" that comes after his name on paper on a ballot line. And, he'll never tell you that. Nor does he support true options in general. There's no index, but I can tell you that you won't find a phrase like "Green Party" in this book.

Second is that, speaking of that, this book is all about domestic issues. Yes, ALL. Every chapter is about a domestic issue.

Why? Yes, he voted against the Iraq War. So did other Democrats, even if they were a minority. That said, Bernie in general, and the duopoly in general, have supported most American imperialism and American interventionalism. Bernie's no real friend of the Palestinians, for example. And, some of us know that. And we know that if he wrote enough about foreign policy, he eventually couldn't hide that.

Third is that, contra most 1 and 2 star reviews, while he called himself a "social democrat," he's not an actual socialist.

Fourth is that this is not a well-written book. It's the print version of Bernie's one-note trumpet, which eventually does become tiresome. And, as noted above, it was a quick-enough knockoff that there's no index.

(Update from original review: I think it was hastened to print to function as a lead-in and promo for the kickoff of the Sanders Institute. Once again, follow the money.)

The "Our Revolution" organization, at least from what I can see at the state level in my state, appears to be targeting entirely Dems on the left hand of the state Democratic party. Greens, Socialists, left-liberal independents need not apply. The book was written to further that; hence my headline.

Hence the header. (Combining points 1 and 2 above, in the one Dem debate, when Bernie discussed coups, he only mentioned Republican-sponsored ones. He ignored Diem in Vietnam, Hillary Clinton's coup against Honduras, and the semi-coup against Ukraine, for example.)

I don't like being lumped with disgruntled Hillbots and wingnuts, who make up all the 1- and 2-star reviews. But, Bernie could have done something different than he did from June on.


View all my reviews

==

Finally, a pro tip. With that big of a "get" in the Politico interview, I can guarantee you the rest of Brazile's book will be thin soup. And, per the title, a fair chunk of that thin soup will be "Putin Did It" BS. We probably won't even get either John Podesta's risotto tips or Putin's borscht with wild boar recipe.

Pro tip 2: Per Hank Kissinger, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." After money, it's what to follow next in politics. Brazile isn't yet done with the Democratic world, and she's triangulating into a post-Hillary future. For the same reason, I suspect "Shattered" didn't deliver as much deep dish as promised, and what it had wasn't any tastier of deep dish than Papa John's. Tipsters didn't want to burn too many bridges, or to destroy piers along with the bridge crossings.

Pro tip 3: If we want to see the money game, let's see how many copies Hillz, Prima Donna and Bernie the not so Socialist sell in a year's time.

#DNCLeaks — religious bigotry of DNC and presumably Hillary Clinton

Via Mediate, as shown in this email that's part of WikiLeaks' new trove of Democratic National Committee email leaks, it's clear the DNC was at least mulling over the ideas of smeaering Bernie Sanders as a secularist.

So, secularist Clintonistas, and "my Democrats right or wrong," you're OK with this .... bigotry?

And Clintonistas, don't try to pawn this off on the DNC. Wikileaks is making clear its collaboration with the Clinton campaign.

And, as Mediate explains, emailer Brad Marshall is the party’s chief financial officer; this was NOT a low-level bad apple staffer. And, per the paragraph above, this wasn't spoken into a vacuum, nor idly.

Now, at least one Hillbot blogger, who I loathe more by the day, as a secular humanist, does deep knee bends of hypocrisy by saying, in essence, "but this was only talked about," while ignoring that Marshall is now lying, saying this wasn't about Sanders, just some generic Jewish guy.

Hell, for all we know, the question Sanders faced about his religion at the one Dem debate, even though two months before the Marshall email, may have been due to media prodding by Camp Clinton, the DNC, or both.



Yes, Denise Ghattas was speaking from the audience, but ... the question seemed peculiar.

Ghattas is 'connected,' the niece of Helen K. Persson of some $$$. (She gave millions in her will to a performing arts center named after the father of Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts fame.) She's very "plugged in" to the philanthropic world in Flint, as shown in part on her Facebook page. Her Facebook friends include ABC's Bob Woodruff. Her husband is a doctor an attorney. She runs an educational consulting business but that link is the most I could find about it.

It's more likely, though, going by her FB friends, that she's religiously fairly conservative. It's been a long time since I lived in Flint, but I'm guessing she and her Arab-American husband are moderately conservative Catholics. I don't see any campaign contributions in her name, but another Ghattis gave to Michigan GOP Senator Spence Abraham.

And, for that matter, she could have lied about being undecided, or at least about being decided for one party but undecided for an individual candidate. Her question could have given Marshall ammo, though, on the flip side.

(Turns out she's a political independent, Orthodox not Catholic, and the question had a First Amendment backgrounf which wasn't explained by Anderson Cooper not having her explain the background to the question.)

Clintonistas will try to explain this away, of course, and fail, just as they try to explain away, and fail, her active membership in the secretive, right-wing leaning prayer group The Fellowship. Oh, and yes, involvement of Jim Wallis of Sojourners in the National Prayer Breakfast aside, The Fellowship is conservative, both religiously AND politically, per the start of a long Clinton profile.

And, Dems, if we're going to hint at smearing somewhat secular Jews, just how observant is Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz?

Update, and speaking of her:

1. Sanders has surrendered the rest of his backbone by trying to pin this all on her. In an interview with Jake Tapper, he didn't even mention Marshall.
2. Per that same link, DWS will not preside over the convention.
3. DWS has now resigned. That said, many Berners probably didn't realize Clinton wasn't a total fan of hers. And, at least for the convention, she's being replaced by cleat Clintonista Donna Brazile.

Update 2: Still without admitting the email was about Sanders, Marshall has apologized.

Gibbs to lead Democrats?

Boy, if White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is tapped to lead the DNC, this could be a clusterfuck. Even more Blue Dogs running against Obama in 2012, even as Gibbs tries to chase them down. The "professional left" kicked even harder, perhaps. Getcha popcorn!

Didn’t I tell you about Obama’s e-mail list?

Those of you who have joined the 13-million Obama Army are now being recruited for your first mission – helping pass the new budget.

David Plouffe, who runs Organizing for America from inside the Democratic National Committee, will honcho the activism effort.

Thank doorknob I never sent The One an e-mail.

And, that all said, a dry run of this type of activism didn’t do all that well. Maybe Obama hasn’t quite so reinvented politics for the 21st century after all

I don’t get one thing about Democratic debates

Why let ABC, or whomever, dictate who the moderator(s) will be? Charlie Gibson is apparently godawful, as this brief of question subjects shows, or Josh Marshall’s full rundown of inane questions, followed up by answers that are genuinely befuddled to the most inane of them (like trying to get both Clinton and Obama to take the Mario Cuomo “pledge” of agreeing to nominate the other one as his/her running mate), or politically spinning to others of them.

I mean, this is the day of not just the Internet, but of many people having broadband connections.
Josh suggests using the League of Women Voters.

Why not go one better? Have Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean pick a moderator and produce the whole thing in house? If a TV network wants to run it, fine; if not, stream it live on the Internet.

I mean, there’s no need to put up with a Charlie Gibson, or a Tim Russert, in these days.

According to Media Matters, tonight’s debate is not the first example of Gibson’s debate-moderating inanity.

DNC shooting itself in foot in gay lawsuit

The Washington Blade, the Capital’s gay newspaper, is giving a smackdown to the Democratic National Committee, claiming the DNC is trying to intimidate the paper over its reporting in the gay discrimination suit against it by former LGBT outreach director Donald Hitchcock.

I blogged a little bit about this earlier. It’s incomprehensible, if true, that the DNC would engage in gay discrimination. Hitchcock claims harassment and retaliation by DNC Chief of Staff Leah Daughtery and Chairman Howard Dean, held him responsible for criticism of the DNC’s LGBT outreach efforts by his partner, Democratic consultant Paul Yandura.

Blade Kevin Naff says two DNC attorneys recently visited the paper’s office over the paper’s criticizing the DNC’s response to anti-gay comments by former Joint Chief of Staff head Gen. Peter Pace. The lawyers claim they had no connection to the suit and weren’t even representing the DNC, since another attorney is the actual attorney of record in the suit.

Right, right. Gays can vote Green or stay home, you know.

DNC being sued over alleged gay bias in firing

Hmm, this one is news to me. The Democratic National Committee, along with named individuals including Chairman Howard Dean, is being sued by Donald Hitchcock for alleged anti-gay bias in firing him.

Hitchcock claims Dean and other leaders fired him in 2006 after his boyfriend, Paul Yandura, wrote an open letter criticizing the party’s lackluster gay activism.