.  Holy Joe has boatloads of cash and he’s spending it like a drunken sailor — $5 million to date, and $4.2 in the bank.  It’s a FUCKING ENORMOUS amount of money to spend in a state like Connecticut, and he will end up outspending Lamont 2 to 1 — doing nothing positive and going on the air with hateful, mean spirited attacks.  If anyone wants to know how the defense industry, the pharmaceutical industry and soul-sucking lobbies like NARAL and HRC go about buying themselves a Senator, this is how it’s done.

Maybe it’s time some journalists start giving the same scrutiny to Lieberman’s finances and stop printing Joe’s endless whining about Ned?  And when exactly does Mr. Transparency plan to release the list of Hadassah’s pharmaceutical lobbying clients, so we can all see how much Holy Joe has done for them?

One of the things Joe’s spending on — direct mailers that call Ned a war profiteer.  No this is not satire from the man who is the #1 recipient of defense industry lobbying money in the Senate.  Can you say projection?  Said one person who is diligently working to support Ned Lamont, "this is going to make kicking Joe’s ass all that much sweeter."

.  Okay I swear to Kobe I have not been huffing glue, there is a surprisingly good rundown of the Lieberman/Lamont race on…the Christian Broadcasting Network (YouTube above, courtesy Spazeboy).  They interview Branford Boy of My Left Nutmeg, CTKeith of Dump Joe, Maura is seen by the float, Tom Swan makes an appearance (as does the Kiss Float), and Monk’s famous graphic of Lieberman as Bush’s lapdog also sneaks in.  Money quote from Holy Joe himself:

What my opponent is saying, and some of the hotheads who support him, is that if you’re not 100%, you’re not with us.  When any political party begins to apply that kind of test, I think it’s already on the way to being a minority party.

Feel free to insert your own punchline.  Joe is just making it too easy — this is baby’s game.

.  The GOP candidate Schlessinger is actively being nudged out by state GOP party dons:

Schlesinger was urged by Gov. M. Jodi Rell and GOP Chairman George Gallo on Wednesday to consider abandoning his Senate bid after they learned he used a fake name while gambling at Foxwoods Resort Casino in the 1990s.

It’s probably moot if Joe wins the primary, but if he ditches the party many seem to think the GOP are laying the groundwork to clear out Schlessinger so they can freely endorse Lieberman.   Others think they might run a more serious candidate, but nobody can really think of anyone likely to fit the bill.

.  Ned talking to a debate team member at Young Democrats last night:  

"I could use some pointers from you!" joked a jovial Lamont.  "I’d watched the Cheney-Lieberman debate," said Lamont of a much more civil faceoff between vice-presidential nominees. "Then he comes out, and boom!" he said, referring to Lieberman’s surprising aggressiveness on the floor.

Ned probably would have been better prepared by watching Mexican wrestling.  Or maybe just the Willie Horton ad.

.  Tim Tagaris (Internet Communications Director for Ned Lamont) over at MLN, on the Family, Friends and Neighbors program: 

As far as process stories about the U.S. Senate campaign go, there’s been an under-reported elephant in the room for quite some time now.  We’re never going to match Senator Lieberman’s (Lieberman-CT) millions in corproate interest and political action committee cash.  And frankly, we don’t want to.  There’s one weapon in our arsenal that will trump his pharma funded smear campaign… and that’s you.

Ned Lamont’s "Family, Friends and Neighbors" Campaign

Using this online tool, you can send a postcard with a personalized message from you to your friends, family and neighbors in Connecticut. Later, you’ll follow up with phone calls to your personalized get-out-the-vote list to remind your network to vote for Ned on August 8.

This is a very exciting tool for GOTV.  Please stop by and give it a test drive. 

. Mark Schmidt , Josh Marshall and Atrios all point out the obvious, namely  that the traditional media narrative has yet to trip over — Lieberman isn’t taking a beating because of the blogs no matter how much Holy Joe would like to believe it.  Lieberman has a Connecticut Problem.  Pure and simple.   Digby finds an interesting statistic to back this up, which demonstrates that Holy Joe’s popularity took  a local swan dive in 2005: 

Now here’s the question. What happened in late 2005 that made Lieberman tank among Democrats? It certainly wasn’t blogofascist attention at that point.

I’m guessing it was this, which was picked up by all the local papers in Connecticut.

If Trent Lott told his Republican constitutents they were betraying the country by speaking out against a Democratic president, I suspect he’d find himself in the same straits as Joe Lieberman does today.

It was the straw that broke the camels back.

Nonetheless I expect to read many more reports that it is all a dastardly blogger plot.  Don’t they know it’s all Lowell Weicker?  

Related posts:

  1. “He’s With Us On Everything But The War”
  2. Lieberman for Anything
  3. Lieberman’s Filibuster Threats Run Counter to 2006 Campaign Rhetoric
  4. Is PhRMA Afraid of the Progressive Block?
  5. Klein on How Lieberman Went Bad: It’s All Jane’s Fault