Comments on: Can't/Won't Pay Your Bill? It's Ned's fault.

Can't/Won't Pay Your Bill? It's Ned's fault.

thanotopsis — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:18:12 -0800

Ned Lamont responds to accusations of hacking the Lieberman website. In response to a reported issue with the Lieberman campaign websites, Ned Lamont claims to have nothing to do with it. In Lamont's blog you'll notice, however, that someone has divulged the real reason behind the websites not being available: "Perhaps Joe should contact Diana Fassbender, fassbenderw (at) yahoo (dot) com, the billing contact for joe2006.com at “Friends of Joe Lieberman.” She can ask their host, www.theplanet.com, how to reconcile the account and restore service. It’s 1-800-377-6103—we’re here to help. It looks like a simple case of non-payment. Pretty sloppy by the Lieberman folks."

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:23:52 -0800

"...check out the URL that joe2006.com resolves to: server1.myhostcamp.com/suspended.page/ 'Suspended'. Accounts are generally suspended for one of two reasons: 1) inappropriate or illegal content (which we can obviously rule out in this case), or 2) from lack of payment. And that would make sense given that the first screen when Lieberman's site went down was, indeed, a request that the website owner contact their billing department." [source]

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:25:53 -0800

oh snap! clearly, Ned LaMont is at fault for forgetting to pay Joe's bills.

By: theonetruebix

theonetruebix — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:26:20 -0800

Although.

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:27:18 -0800

"Ned Lamont claims to have nothing to do with it. In Lamont's blog you'll notice, however, that someone has divulged the real reason behind the websites not being available:" So? How does this prove causality?

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:29:15 -0800

"The Lieberman campaign has produced an email from their host claiming the outages came from a DoS attack. It doesn't pass the smell test -- DoS attacks wouldn't bring down a site for 18 hours (or however long their site has been down). So it could be their hosting provider is either covering for the Lieberman campaign, or perhaps more likely, it is simply incompetent. The DoS 'attack' may have merely been strong pre-election traffic....It happens to the best sites. The trick is to get the site back up ASAP, and that's what Lieberman's host appears incapable of doing...." [source]

By: Plutor

Plutor — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:29:44 -0800

It's posted in the comments of the blog! Therefore, it's Ned's fault. QED. Come on, Strasbourg, try to keep up here.

By: NationalKato

NationalKato — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:29:49 -0800

Do they call this political web-slinging?

By: Dr. Boom

Dr. Boom — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:31:50 -0800

this credulous parroting of the Lamonters line is just lame, and the information is circa 14+ hours ago. all indications now are that joe2006 got cracked. thanks to theonetruebix for the tpm link, which catches us up to the present.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:33:15 -0800

Those mocking the Lieberman campaign's paranoia should read theonetruebix's link. This is almost certainly is a DoS. No hosting provider in their right mind would let an account like this disabled on election day because of a friggin' unpaid bill. I've forgotten to send payment for much smaller accounts to much smaller hosting providers, and they've always bent over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt and provide uninterrupted service.

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:33:19 -0800

I blame Mel Gibson.

By: theonetruebix

theonetruebix — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:33:28 -0800

FYI, that email isn't from their hosting provider. It's from their Internet consultant. There's still been no statement from their hosting provider. (Which is not to take a position on the DDoS issue either way.)

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:34:25 -0800

I'm basically pro-Lamont, but I can't wait to read Kos's apology.

By: mr.curmudgeon

mr.curmudgeon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:35:56 -0800

Cover for Lieberman to contest election results?

By: SweetJesus

SweetJesus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:35:58 -0800

DoS attacks wouldn't bring down a site for 18 hours (or however long their site has been down) DailyKos is full of shit. A denial of service attack can absolutely last for far longer than 18 hours. Man, it takes balls to post something like that to the world...

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:37:16 -0800

A comment posted at Firedoglake:

"It's entirely possible the Lieberman Campaign was indeed paid up on whatever hosting package they purchased, but they had not purchased sufficient bandwidth to meet the demans. It's important to understand the difference between not paying your bill, or just not planning properly. I suspect for the Lieberman Campaign, who appear to be leaning toward being luddites, simply didn't know or plan for the bandwidth demand their site might see. Certainly Lamont cannot be blamed for Lieberman or his campaign aides being ignorant."

By: matteo

matteo — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:38:26 -0800

I want to know what Ted Stevens thinks about this

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:39:45 -0800

can't you prove it was really a DOS attack or not? it would seem simple--just show the logs, no? I don't buy it--they've been flailing and trying all sorts of dirty tricks--they've accused Lamont of having stock (which Lieberman himself owned), they've passed out flyers at black churches accusing Lamont of racism, they've shouted Lamont out everywhere, etc...

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:39:58 -0800

matteo -- the tubes must of blown a fuse somewhere!

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:40:51 -0800

Update: As many readers have noted, Dan Geary does not in fact work for the campaign's web host, as Gerstein indicated. Geary is an internet consultant for Geary Internet Strategies who works for the campaign. So when you produce a letter from you're hosting company saying you paid your bill and it turns out to be fake, what are people supposed to think about that?

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:41:03 -0800

If Lieberman loses the primary tonight, they'll blame the Internets! Oh noes, those nasty bloggers, haxors, and others!

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:41:43 -0800

oh, also, Lieberman's "friends" are tarring Lamont in the WSJ with comments left at third-party blogs, while the loudest supporters for Lieberman himself are insane rightwingers like Coulter.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:42:33 -0800

From the Lieberman campaign -- "Well... We’ve offered to send our tech guru over to fix their website problems. That was over an hour ago… no response."

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:43:38 -0800

Oops... I mean -- from the *Lamont campaign*.

By: mr.curmudgeon

mr.curmudgeon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:43:41 -0800

. <------For Democracy.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:44:25 -0800

In re: that firedoglake comment- again, no sane hosting provider would ever disable an account like this because of some silly financial issue. There is no way that this is because of an unpaid bill or a exceeding bandwidth. Unless the Lieberman campaign went with an absolute bargain basement provider, which they didn't, no one would shut down service on election day because of something like this. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Lieberman campaign told the hosting provider not to be in any rush to get the site back up, since it provides a nice election day story. But this was a DoS.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:44:39 -0800

That Gerstein is the same one from DC who screamed in that coffee shop at Lamont?

By: thanotopsis

thanotopsis — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:46:02 -0800

again, no sane hosting provider would ever disable an account like this because of some silly financial issue. Many sane hosting providers are large enough that they use automation to handle things like bandwidth throttling. Case in point: Theplanet.com is pretty big, and pretty old, and probably does this as well.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:46:22 -0800

If only websites like this were on some sort of higher 'tier' for us classy individuals could access them without fear of interruption by DoS's, virii and myspaces. I'd be willing to pay double, no, quintuple my current internet bill!

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:47:39 -0800

Another point regarding bandwidth overages: standard procedure in the hosting business is to bill nice juicy surcharges when an account goes over, not to shut it down. That's the point: to make money. Its not a bandwidth overage.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:47:56 -0800

Leiberman2006.com isn't even resolving. That's weird, isn't it? amberglow writes "That Gerstein is the same one from DC who screamed in that coffee shop at Lamont?" That was someone name Richard Goodstein.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:48:03 -0800

gsteff, how do you explain this: ...I post because Marion Steinfels is running around proclaiming that someone hacked her site. This isn’t the first time they haven’t paid their bills, it happened when the stupid bear-cub ad ran and Sean Smith bragged all the traffic (from people mocking the ad) crashed their site. Same notice. But since the Hotline Blog ran with Marion’s story (sort of), I had to post this here because they are undoubtedly peddling the story to other outlets as well. Passing on a different screen shot than the one above, from after they paid their hosting fees. ...

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:50:51 -0800

Many sane hosting providers are large enough that they use automation to handle things like bandwidth throttling. True, but providers that big also have people monitoring availability 24/7, and for an account like this, they'd have responded very quickly to provide whatever resources were needed.

By: The Confessor

The Confessor — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:51:47 -0800

amberglow: Nope, that was Goodstein. in general: Given the extent to which polls have tightened in the past few days, and given the historically weak performance of candidates chiefly popular with younger voters (who are less likely to actually vote), I expect that Lieberman will win the democratic party's nomination... albeit with a very thin margin of victory, and subsequently weak mandate.

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:51:58 -0800

That Gerstein is the same one from DC who screamed in that coffee shop at Lamont? That was richard goodstein actually.

By: SirOmega

SirOmega — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:52:34 -0800

The DoS 'attack' may have merely been strong pre-election traffic....It happens to the best sites. The trick is to get the site back up ASAP, and that's what Lieberman's host appears incapable of doing...." My ass. The Planet is a kick ass host. Large tech sites (HardOCP) and small sites alike are hosted there. The small tech site I work for gets dugg/slashdotted occasionally. We call up The Planet, and they give us the bandwidth and performance we need to keep up with it. No problems whatsoever.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:52:52 -0800

"TPM Reader RB chimes in on the Joe website mystery

...I own a web hosting company (***********.com) that uses the same software as the Lieberman site. That screenshot that the Lamont folks grabbed is a standard automated warning from a website control panel known as "Cpanel". Most large webhosts host many thousands of domains and their systems are automated. If a bill goes unpaid, or bandwidth is exceeded by a specified amount, the site gets auto-suspended and that Cpanel page replaces the index page. It's possible that the site was suspended for exceeding their bandwidth allotment as opposed to not paying their bills, but for someone like Joe Lieberman to not have his ducks in a row on the night before an election like this is quite telling.

Other knowledgeable emailers suggest the same possibility -- not that Joe folks necessarily forgot to pay their bill but that they tripped some bandwidth or server load limit and hadn't made arrangements in advance to keep the site online if this happened." -- Josh Marshall

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:53:27 -0800

amberglow: it could be a crashed server because of incompetent tech people on Lieberman's side, as that link suggests. But it definitely was not a financial issue.

By: theonetruebix

theonetruebix — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:55:57 -0800

So when you produce a letter from you're hosting company saying you paid your bill and it turns out to be fake, what are people supposed to think about that? The letter wasn't fake. It was mis-attributed in the original TPMmuckraker item as being from the hosting company.

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 11:58:31 -0800

Bush kissed Lieberman. Lieberman is either winning the election, or swimming with the fishes. Only time will tell. All else is just sleight of hand.

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:00:07 -0800

more like jOWNED2006 amirite?

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:02:27 -0800

Bush kissed Lieberman. Joe's and W.'s Fabulous Wedding [Flash]

By: ewagoner

ewagoner — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:03:03 -0800

It looks like their host is not ThePlanet.com but rather myhostcamp.com, which leases servers from ThePlanet. www.joe2006.com is currently redirecting to server1.myhostcamp.com/suspended.page/.

OK, so http://joe2006.com/ is hosted by http://www.myhostcamp.com which is currently redirecting to http://suspended.page/ which is obviously not a proper address. Looks like their ISP is INCOMPETENT, speaking as a UNIX admin, there is no excuse for redirecting to an invalid domain other than stupidity. I was thinking that the redirects could be done as a last ditch attempt on a load balancer if the server farm was overwhelmed, but guess what. There is no load balancer, a tcp fingerprinting shows its a Linux host, and not only that, it's not even running a firewall.. MySQL is running on an open port (pretty sizable security hole), and oddly enough, it's running an IRC daemon - which is a notoriously stupid thing to run if you value your bandwidth (its a service just begging to be used for DoS). Looks to me like it's either 1) amazing incompetent admins or, more likely 2) a honeypot server just asking to be crashed so someone can point fingers. No admins I know are stupid enough to setup a server like this. ...so it looks like a managed server which planet.com leases to myhostcamp.com, who runs multiple domains on that one machine (unless its a round robin DNS load balancing scheme, but I haven't detected that after resolving from four different locations, so it looks like a single machine). Oddly enough, myhostcamp.com has a very small (re: almost no) online presence, tho it does show up here: http://www5.geometry.net/... "Geometry.Net - Religion: Evangelical Free Church Of America" some sort of click harvesting link page. Strange going ons, looks pretty phony to me. [source]

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:03:17 -0800

By: graventy

graventy — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:03:41 -0800

I dunno about the rest of you guys, but I always wait until the day of an election to find out information about the candidates. Who's this Joe Lieberman guy? Where can I find out? I guess I'll just vote for Lamont. In other words....what the fuck does it matter?

By: furiousthought

furiousthought — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:04:04 -0800

This sort of hacking/ fake hacking/ whatever is gonna become SOP in hot races, isn't it? Maybe if candidates' websites got to the point where they just went down by default on Election Day, like real quick, we can be spared years of ridiculous computer-based rumormongering about who haXXored who, was it an inside job, and grrrrgggh.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:05:14 -0800

TPM update: the DoS attack was preceeded by an SQL injection attack. If anyone is curious, SQL injection is one of the oldest, simplest hacks out there... more than 10 years old. There's a million ways for any halfway competent web dev to avoid them. So that's one sign that the Lieberman tech people really are incompetent.

By: illovich

illovich — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:05:32 -0800

Let's get to the important Joe news. Has he or has he not accepted Steven Colbert's invitation to come on the Report? I would do it for the Cocoa Puffs, if not the company.

By: cell divide

cell divide — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:05:49 -0800

no sane hosting provider would ever disable an account like this because of some silly financial issue. It's automated. Although a simple phone call would be enough to turn it back on if it really was a billing issue.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:07:45 -0800

It's automated. Although a simple phone call would be enough to turn it back on if it really was a billing issue. I know, that's what I meant. If that were the issue, the site would be up again instantly.

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:08:46 -0800

Has he or has he not accepted Steven Colbert's invitation to come on the Report? No. Though I would pay cash money to be in the audience for that one if it were to occur.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:11:54 -0800

Well, it's pretty clear that it's not a simple billing issue. That makes the FPP pretty crappy, doesn't it? Maybe we could get an edit?

By: ewagoner

ewagoner — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:12:23 -0800

There are 73 other doamins on the same server as Joe's. I haven't checked them all, but the ones I have are up and running fine. I was especially fond of bottleblankie.com.

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:17:07 -0800

Joe2006.com could've made the IP logs available a long time ago (even if they couldn't log into the admin panel they could ask for the file to be sent by the hosting co.) , the fact that they haven't suggests they've got a big fat nothing to back up that it was a DoS attack. The fact that it's still down is either a sign of extreme incompetence or they're milking this for all it's worth. Fuck them. Fuck Chris Matthews and the WSJ's LAnny J. Davis (who has a cigarrette burn given to him by frat brother Bush) and to hell with Joe the hypocrite.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:19:22 -0800

You can almost here the JOEmentum fizzing out there...

By: ewagoner

ewagoner — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:21:19 -0800

Heh... LaunchProof.com is also on the same server, and they chose an unfortunate business name: "Launchproof.com -- Coming Summer 2005"

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:21:23 -0800

1- take own server offline 2- claim DOS attack from opponent 3- ...profit! It's as likely as anything else that's been proposed here...

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:22:01 -0800

jomg

By: mr.curmudgeon

mr.curmudgeon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:22:05 -0800

In the time it took Joementum to file his complaint with the Connecticut's Attorney General, Chief State's Attorney, and the United States Attorney's Office...he probably could have had someone get the site up and running again. Priorities, eh?

By: Epenthesis

Epenthesis — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:22:45 -0800

One question: why are CT voters, or any of us at all, supposed to care about this unless it can be traced back to one of the campaigns? Either a stupid pro-Lamont hacker decided to take the site down to hurt Lieberman, or a stupid pro-Lieberman hacker took it down to implicate the Lamont campaign for sabotage. In neither case does this tell us anything new about the candidates, except that Lieberman is enough of a weasel to make unfounded accusations in the hopes of picking up a few sympathy points. The only telling piece of evidence is that the Lieberman campaign does have access to the server, as demonstrated here.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:23:57 -0800

Joe2006.com could've made the IP logs available a long time ago I doubt that they'd do this if they're also planning legal action. They'd ask their lawyers first, and that could take a few hours. the fact that they haven't suggests they've got a big fat nothing to back up that it was a DoS attack. The fact that it's still down is either a sign of extreme incompetence or they're milking this for all it's worth. Well, I'd guess that the attackers stopped once they realized how counterproductive it was. No question about their incompetence or that they're milking it though. No matter what went wrong, they could have had the site back up a long time ago if they wanted to.

By: mr.curmudgeon

mr.curmudgeon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:27:41 -0800

Lamont campaign links to Joe's Google cache site.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:35:16 -0800

joe2006.com is running on the IP address 69.56.129.130. If this is a DoS attack, we should see slow response times, dropped packets, and an otherwise terrible response to pings, right?

$ ping 69.56.129.130
PING 69.56.129.130 (69.56.129.130) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 69.56.129.130: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=35.5 ms
64 bytes from 69.56.129.130: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=35.8 ms
64 bytes from 69.56.129.130: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=36.4 ms
64 bytes from 69.56.129.130: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=35.6 ms
64 bytes from 69.56.129.130: icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=35.4 ms
64 bytes from 69.56.129.130: icmp_seq=6 ttl=57 time=30.1 ms
64 bytes from 69.56.129.130: icmp_seq=7 ttl=57 time=35.6 ms
--- 69.56.129.130 ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6062ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 30.188/34.966/36.419/1.975 ms

That looks pretty good to me. A traceroute also indicates all packets are go for that IP address. Furthermore, there is, in fact, a webserver running on that IP address, which is running the cPannel software. Response times vary, leading me to believe there is high load on the machine from time to time, but it always returns the default "There is no website configured at this address." message. This leads me to further believe that there is no DoS attack.

By: frogan

frogan — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:37:51 -0800

Is there such a thing as a DoS attack that is designed NOT to overwhelm the server, per se, but to instead rack up insane bandwidth overage charges? Don't take 'em down, but hurt 'em real bad?

By: ewagoner

ewagoner — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:38:33 -0800

I almost missed this... meetned.com, the Lieberman campaign's Lamont attack site, is also on the same server, and is up.

By: edverb

edverb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:41:46 -0800

Chris Matthews interviewed someone from the Lieberman camp about this...in his maddeningly vague, focus tested PR man language he's claiming their e-mail is down as well. An MX lookup shows their mailhost to be on the same IP. 73 other websites hosted on the same IP, all of which are up...but Joe2006's email and web services are offline (and they're claiming a DOS attack?) Funny, the IP responds to pings just fine. Their name servers are up, and there appears to be no DNS hijacking going on (everything resolves to where it's supposed to). And this late in the day (a very important day at that), their hosting company still hasn't / can't be reached? So far all we have is one website down and not a shred of evidence to back up their accusations and blamestorming. A letter from a consultant who works for their campaign means less than nothing. At this point, my guess is someone didn't pay for their bandwidth. (And in this particular case, I wouldn't rule out the old "bugging their own offices and blaming it on their opponent" trick. They're pretty desperate.)

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:46:19 -0800

mr.curmudgeon: "Lamont campaign links to Joe's Google cache site." posted by Lieberman campaign links back to Lamont site.

By: justkevin

justkevin — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:50:45 -0800

The other site ewagoner references on the same server are bogging down as well. Here's what I think happened: The campaign hired someone to build their website, who hosted it as a shared account on their Planet/ServerMatrix box. All's fine, except the traffic is more than the box can handle. Site keeps going down. Maybe the site was built in a load unfriendly way, maybe it's making a ridiculous number of database calls. I've seen big companies make this mistake-- looks fine in dev mode, but you didn't test it under load and it breaks. At this point, all the traffic generated by reports of hacking on Mefi and Kos etc are creating an effective DOS attack.

By: Divine_Wino

Divine_Wino — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:52:00 -0800

Ned is in ur base, DDOS'in ur d00dz.

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:52:20 -0800

StrasbourgSecaucus links back to MetaFilter discussion.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:55:02 -0800

Why Lieberman's Site Is Down

...it's clear that Lieberman's website isn't suffering from a Denial of Service attack. But now I have the definitive answer as to why Lieberman's site went down. They are paying $15/month for hosting at a place called MyHostCamp, with a bandwidth limit of 10GB. MyHostCamp is currently down, along with all their clients. Here's the deal -- you get what you pay for. My hosting bill is now over $7K per month. A smaller site doesn't need that much bandwidth, but if you're paying $15 because your $12 million campaign is too freakin' cheap to pay for quality hosting, then don't go blaming your opponent when your shitty service goes out. For their part, the Lamont campaign has offered its technical expertise to get Lieberman's site back up (which could be done in an hour by a competent sysadmin), and has added a link to the googlecached version of Lieberman's site at the top of their blog. One side is acting mature, the other is running around making baseless accusations. Update: Dan Gerstein, Lieberman spokesperson, admits they have no evidence Lamont's campaign or his supporters are behind their website woes. I'm telling you, it's down because they were too cheap to pay for quality hosting. That's a lesson to all of you campaigns skimping on hosting. $15 won't cut it."

[source]

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:57:53 -0800

That Kos post is inaccurate. As ewagoner noted above, there are 73 other domains at that IP address. They may or may not be on the same physical server as joe2006.com, but they're almost certainly all being hosted by myhostcamp. Near as I can tell, all the domains at 69.56.129.130 are all up. So the problems are not affecting all of mybasecamp. I also find it absolutely hilarious that this is now the lead story at nytimes.com.

By: mr.curmudgeon

mr.curmudgeon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:58:19 -0800

Phew! Glad that's over! Now the talking heads can move on to reporting the really important news. Right? Riiight?

By: NationalKato

NationalKato — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 12:58:23 -0800

It's getting nasty out there.

By: The Confessor

The Confessor — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:01:06 -0800

NationalKato That made me fall out of my chair laughing!

By: StrasbourgSecaucus

StrasbourgSecaucus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:02:17 -0800

$15 a month. I spend more every month on blunt wraps than Joe spends keeping his website online.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:11:25 -0800

"It looks like this could be simple incompetence on the Lieberman campaign's part. They aren't apparently running a load-balancer or a firewall. ...Here's an email from a technical contact....Bottom line, it shouldn't have taken the Lieberman camp more than an hour to fix this.

1. Unless and until Lieberman's hosting provider releases his logfiles (gateway router, www server, mail server, DNS server) for forensic review, all of this is speculation. 2. Using the following information:
a. the site has been down for 18 hours b. email to (and from?) Joe2006.com addresses has been affected c. Joe2006.com and mail.joe2006.com resolve to IP 69.56.129.130 d. the reverse lookup on that IP is 82.81.3845.static.theplanet.com e. joe2006.com now forwards to http://server1.myhostcamp.com/ suspended.page/
3. It's highly unlikely this is a true DoS of DDoS attack. This is because we can ping all the IPs noted above and we can see the page at http://server1.myhostcamp.com/suspended page. If this was a real DoS or DDoS attack, we'd not be able to see any of this and their servers would not be answering their ping at an average of 50ms (millisecond) per packet. True attacks bring down servers, routers and networks. From all available outside evidence this does not appear to be the case. 4. Here what might have happened:
a. Web traffic spikes as national focus on the campaign grows b. Based on (2b) above, if the webserver is throttled by traffic (due to actual traffic or poor response tuning or an attack or a combination of the three), this would also affect mail delivery to joe2006.com. It could also affect outbound mail if users on that domain use that address for SMTP service. c. The server is most likely a shared one, since the name, server1.myhostcamp.com, implies lots of other hosts live on it.
5. Regardless of the explanation (3 or 4), here is what you do when that happens:
a. You grab your local backup (you do have a local backup of your files (both scripts and database snapshots, right?). b. You find a host that specialized in high bandwidth hosting and you get an account going ASAP. There are plenty of ISPs that would take your money to expedite this. c. You move your files up, test that everything is working d. You redirect your DNS so that Joe2006.com points to you new server; this change doesn't take very long to propagate because you make sure that the DNS update uses a very low TTL (time to live). e. If needed, you separate your mailserver mail.joe2006.com from your webserver joe2006.com/www.joe2006.com so as to keep your mail up and going.
Steps a-e can be accomplished, especially with the kind of site Joe had up and running before this incident (nothing particularly complex), in less than an hour or so by a competent sysadmin."

[source]

By: teece

teece — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:18:23 -0800

So when Slashdot or MeFi or DailyKos, sites with many thousands of visitors, link to a website, we're calling that a denial of service attack now, huh? That's cute.

By: Addiction

Addiction — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:18:25 -0800

I work as lead Systems Administrator for a medium sized bank. I did some poking around, and ewagonder and sequential are on the money. This site is not down due to a DOS attack (at least not currently, possibly originally, but who DOS attacks for 10 mins then stops?) Man thats really amazingly funny if it is true that their account is the baseline account. Thats like Honda premiering their new 2008 cars, and someone forgetting to pay to have them washed. Who is that stupid? I mean honestly, with this much riding on the next 24 hours, who is stupid enough to not bother to get the right service? If intentional did they really honestly expect that people would say "oh lol DOS attack, hate when that happens! Man I better not vote for Ned!"

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:22:43 -0800

From TPM: "We're just fighting to get something live," he said, "we're not security experts." Obviously. Here's my guess. Joe has run his entire campaign through cronyism and old connections. Most likely Lieberman knew a guy who knew a guy who did hosting. And this is the result. Just like the Bear ad and the rest of their horrible campaign, they ran a totally incompetent. Operation and either left their site open to hax0rs or simply used up all their bandwidth. And their host (being incompetent) can't figure out how to turn off their automatic throttling software.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:24:38 -0800

"For the past twenty-four hours my toaster oven has been acting funny. I turn the little darkness thingy all the way up and the toast still comes out only half toasted. I believe this is a retaliation by my political opponents for my blogging about their dirty tricks. Since becoming a left-wing wacko I have lived my commitment to being lax on security by occasionally leaving my front door unlocked. It would be child's play for my political opponents to sneak in, diddle with my toaster oven, and slink back out into the night their nefarious diddling accomplished. Of course, it's totally unreasonable to expect me to be able to fix it myself. I call on Senator Lieberman to make an unequivocal statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation (how can you vote when you're worried sick about your toaster oven?) and undermine the voting process on Election Day by depriving me of decent toast on which to slather my peanut butter is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."

[signed] BranfordBoy

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:25:43 -0800

By the way, joe took in 1.2 million dollars yesterday. He obviously could have afforded good internet service. I think the host is lying about the hack to cover their asses. They did put up a really simple page that I saw last night saying they were having difficulties, etc. Now it's back to the suspended page (which also times out itself). I really think that the sysadmin running their host just doesn't know how to turn off throttling. There's also a possibility that the traffic is overloading their actual CPU, rather then using up all their traffic.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:28:06 -0800

By: xod

xod — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:28:38 -0800

D-Joe-A

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:29:51 -0800

Remember when Karl Rove found the bug in John Clements' campaign office? What a hoot...

By: eunoia

eunoia — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:30:11 -0800

I was walking across the New Haven green after leaving work today, and there were some people holding signs supporting Dan Malloy. Some guy walking behind me kept yelling "Lieberman! Lieberman!" at the people, apparently not realizing that Malloy is running for governor, not for a seat in the senate. Who cares about websites? Can we do something about idiots?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:30:57 -0800

Near as I can tell, all the domains at 69.56.129.130 are all up. So the problems are not affecting all of mybasecamp. It's myhostcamp, not mybasecamp. And neither http://myhostcamp.com nor http://69.56.129.130 load for me.

By: edverb

edverb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:37:22 -0800

TANGLED UP TUBES! not a truck

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:37:24 -0800

Weird, meetned.com does load, and it's on the same IP. Very strange.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:38:14 -0800

delmoi, try using this page to ping that IP Address. The server is not down, nor are the other sites hosted on that IP address. On preview: as you've just noted.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:38:54 -0800

Hehe.

By: eriko

eriko — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:41:15 -0800

Lamont campaign links to Joe's Google cache site. Sysadmin here as well, in claims processing. As to the idea that their email is down, you can go to the form on the cached version and sign up for the newsletter, and get an acknowledgment email back... Also:

$ dig joe2006.com mx
(trimmed stuff from here -- eriko)

joe2006.com.            86364   IN      MX      10 mail.joe2006.com.

$ telnet mail.joe2006.com 25
Trying 69.56.129.130...
Connected to mail.joe2006.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-server1.myhostcamp.com ESMTP Exim 4.52 #1 Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:36:59 -0700 
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited, 
220 and/or bulk e-mail.
HELO
250 server1.myhostcamp.com Hello  [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX]

1) joe2006.com has an mx record. (They only have one. Silly rabbits.) 2) There is, in fact, a mailserver answering there. So, the "fact" that they're not getting email is their own fault. They're advertising a valid mailserver to send mail to them. That mailserver is up. If the server isn't configured to accept mail for them, that's their fault.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:44:11 -0800

NETCRAFT CONFIRMS IT

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:57:20 -0800

It will be interesting to see what the investigation finds out. Just watch – will we ever see such an article? Lieberman Camp Admits to Gross Incompetence Associated Press | August 15, 2006

The campaign of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman admitted that their website was not “hacked” on the day of the Democratic primary race for the United States Senate between Mr. Lieberman and Ned Lamont, a Greenwich multimillionaire whose antiwar candidacy proved unexpectedly strong, but that it "crashed" due to the “gross incompetence” of the system administrator responsible for maintaining their technical operations. “It’s true,” said Mr. Lieberman’s campaign manager, Sean Smith, “We should have never listened to Senator Stevens’ recommendation that we hire a television repairman to maintain our tubes on the Internet.” Smith, referring to Senator Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska) recent claim that the Internet is a series of tubes, and “not a truck,” added, “It is unconscionable that our opponent did not inform us earlier that we were operating a sub-par website and e-mail operation. Furthermore, how dare they wait until the day of the election to offer us their technical support at the time of our greatest need?”

I doubt it.

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 13:58:30 -0800

From the New York Times: Mr. Lieberman, meanwhile, canceled the last two events of his 10-day bus tour, citing a lack of voters at the polling stations. Really? 14,000 newly registered CT democrats, another 14,000 who just switched sides before the election, and there aren't enough voters? I just spoke with my sister, who had to go to three different polling stations this morning before finding her ownclaimed that each one was packed, and wehen she finally got to vote herself at 9:30, over three hundred people had voted in that station alone. A line of ten people formed behind her in the time it took to look up her name. By contrast, in the 2000 primaries, my sister lived in Dallas, and became the delegate for her district, and then region and beyond, purely by being the only Democrat to show up (a disproportionate part of Texas ended up supporting Bill Bradley) This primary seems a little better attended. But Joe's probably right. CT doesn't really care about this race.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:03:14 -0800

Update: From an email:

http://www.meetned.com/ 69.56.129.130 http://www.joe2006.com/ 69.56.129.130 MeetNed.com - Up. Joe2006.com - Down.

DoS attacks don't affect particular accounts on a server. They bring down the whole server. The attack site is up, their campaign site is down. This isn't a DoS attack. Will the Lieberman campaign reimburse state and federal investigators wasting resources to confirm that the site went down because the campaign was too cheap to hire a quality hosting provider?"

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:12:21 -0800

ericb writes "DoS attacks don't affect particular accounts on a server. They bring down the whole server. The attack site is up, their campaign site is down. " Just because meetned and joe2006 have the same IP address doesn't mean they're running on the same server.

By: Flashman

Flashman — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:13:57 -0800

I think this is something the Lieberman campaign have cooked up themselves, to reverse-smear Lamont and get a ton of publicity.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:15:47 -0800

ericb *quotes from DKos website*: "DoS attacks don't affect particular accounts on a server. They bring down the whole server. The attack site is up, their campaign site is down. "

By: ryoshu

ryoshu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:24:58 -0800

I just heard that Lieberman's campaign manager found out his office was bugged.

By: edverb

edverb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:26:41 -0800

From TPMMuckraker:

Lieberman's internet consultant Dan Geary, who oversees Joe2006.com, says he's still sure that their site suffered a "malicious attack." But when pressed, he said that they weren't sure that it was a "Denial of Service" attack, as he'd said earlier. He didn't have any more information about the nature of the supposed attack. "I've spent 99% of my time speaking [to reporters] about the story," he said.

(emphasis mine) Unsolicited advice, free of charge: You should be spending 99% of your time getting the site back up, you knucklehead. These guys are full of it. This is a ploy. If they were truly concerned about the site, they'd be getting it up on a different host by now and their consultant would be locked in a room somewhere until it was done, like any other responsible party would do in this situation. Instead they are milking this for all it's worth. I guess it depends on the factors his job hinges upon. Most webmasters would be sweating their job (and their reputation and career) right now. This jackass isn't managing a web presence. He's managing perception. He's not neglecting his job...he's doing it. gg n00b

By: Wizzlet

Wizzlet — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:27:00 -0800

I've built lots of websites on crappy shared servers. This sort of thing isn't common, but you'd have to be pretty noob-like in the shared host web dev field to have never seen it. Either - 1) You call them up and they turn you back on. This takes minutes. or 2) You move the site to a new host using backups. I've actually done #2 in under an hour. And that includes browsing the hosts plans, buying the service, switching DNS, loading the content & database, and getting mail running. Either we see the log files or it's Lieberman staging a media circus. "No. Don't fix it. We can use this. Just leave the site down. In fact tell the hosting service to leave it down."

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:28:34 -0800

"For the past 6 years my ~~toaster~~ brain has been acting funny. I turn the little democracy thingy all the way up and the ~~toast~~ brain still comes out only half ~~toasted~~ baked. I believe this is a retaliation by my political opponents for my blogging about their dirty tricks. I call on Ned Lamont to make an unequivocal statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation (how can you vote when you're worried sick about your ~~toaster~~ brain?) and undermine the voting process on Election Day by depriving me of a decent ~~toast~~ brain on which to slather my ~~peanut butter~~ disastrous Bush hand jobs is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."

By: SweetJesus

SweetJesus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:29:47 -0800

Quoting Kos: DoS attacks don't affect particular accounts on a server. They bring down the whole server. The attack site is up, their campaign site is down. " Please don't listen to Kos's opinion on technical matters, because he's talking out his ass.

By: theonetruebix

theonetruebix — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:29:48 -0800

Joementum's tubes guru now admits it might not be a DoS, despite his earlier and repeated insinuations that it was.

By: Wizzlet

Wizzlet — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:34:58 -0800

"He didn't have any more information about the nature of the supposed attack." Smoking gun right there. If you can't get detailed info on an attack within a few hours, the attack didn't happen. Heck, why wouldn't you be able to get specifics about the attack immediately? Seriously. I'm asking. How is it possible this guy wouldn't know the exact nature of the attack? I haven't used it in a long time, but I'm prtetty sure you could even noob it using cPanel and figure out what was going on.

By: warbaby

warbaby — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:35:42 -0800

I'm still waiting for the part where we get to beat Lieberman with electrical cables.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:35:57 -0800

Oh, man. I want "tubes guru" on my business card.

By: pardonyou?

pardonyou? — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:37:41 -0800

I'm gonna be so bummed tomorrow when Lieberman vs. Lamont is over. I can't wait to see if my Democrat beat your Democrat.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:40:25 -0800

I think this is something the Lieberman campaign have cooked up themselves, to reverse-smear Lamont and get a ton of publicity. I think so too, especially after them bragging about how the bear ad was so popular it crashed them.

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:41:09 -0800

I can't wait to see if my Democrat beat your Democrat. You misspelled "Republican."

By: anomie

anomie — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:41:54 -0800

Please don't listen to Kos's opinion on technical matters, because he's talking out his ass. Exactly. I'm by no means a Lieberman fan but this is total BS. I remeber kuro5hin being down for months due to DOS. I cant stand that hack or his hacktastic dem fansite.

By: thanotopsis

thanotopsis — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:46:50 -0800

but I'm prtetty sure you could even noob it using cPanel and figure out what was going on. Yes, even in the first versions of cPanel, you could pull raw logs right off of the server. Innumerable products on the web allow you to do log analysis on your desktop, produce pretty graphs, and all for either a measley charge or well within their free trial period. Later versions of cPanel allowed for server administrators to run included versions of web-based statistics software. It's now just a matter of clicking an icon on the main cPanel page to get all sorts of referrer statistics, load information, and bandwidth stats.

By: longsleeves

longsleeves — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:49:49 -0800

As a registered CT Democrat I will be voting for Ned Lamont this evening. Although Leiberman has gotten my vote in the past it was never without a sigh. Joe always has an expression on his face like he just got blown. Before the war was an issue he wasted his time on issues like violence in video games. After the latest poll showed him picking up ground, he said earlier polls indicated that his supporters had wanted to send him a message, which he got, so now democrats will say "OK then!" and get back in his chorus line. What an ego.

By: MikeKD

MikeKD — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:54:54 -0800

Quoting Kos: DoS attacks don't affect particular accounts on a server. They bring down the whole server. The attack site is up, their campaign site is down. " Please don't listen to Kos's opinion on technical matters, because he's talking out his ass. Ok, so how does a DoS attack take out site on a shared server?

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:00:13 -0800

Alexa shows the domain joe2006.com receiving no or almost no page views for greater than 24 hours, possibly as long as four days. Not that Alexa is hugely reliable for this sort of thing, but it's interesting to note. The linked graph also shows the stats for nedlamont.com for the same period. A click on the rank tab shows joe2006.com cracked the top 100,000 websites for a period of a couple of days in June while nedlamont.com has cracked the top 100,000 a few times in the same period and is currently at about the 40,000 mark.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:08:02 -0800

Please don't listen to Kos's opinion on technical matters, because he's talking out his ass. It's not Kos's opinion. He quotes from an e-mail the website received.

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:08:24 -0800

I so wish I lived in Connecticut right now, just so I could vote that lying, crass, manipulative, thug-machine politician-zombie out of office.

By: The Jesse Helms

The Jesse Helms — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:13:07 -0800

After reading everything, it really looks like smoke from the Leiberman campaign. He knows he may lose, so he tosses a hail mary. Most voters aren't tech savvy enough to understand "his bandwidth was exceeded." So his campaign tries to obfuscate. It's not quite an illegitimate black child, but its still pretty dirty.

By: justkevin

justkevin — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:13:20 -0800

Just because meetned and joe2006 have the same IP address doesn't mean they're running on the same server. True, that IP address could be of a load balancer. But I doubt it. Without knowing the internals of their setup, we can only speculate what went wrong. I'm sticking with the idea that dynamically generated php/mysql site got hammered with more traffic than they were expecting. The admin shunted everything on joe2006 over to a suspended page to keep the rest of his sites up. Not sure why he hasn't setup another dedicated server for joe2006 yet, though.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:14:34 -0800

Wonkette: Lieberman Campaign's Website Woes Own Damn Fault:

"Why the hell is Joe Lieberman’s campaign site hosted by these people (site down — probably not because of dirty deeds, by the way) under the cheapest plan available? And why do Lieberman’s FEC filings say he’s paying $1500 to a different company for web hosting? No, we seriously want to know. These aren’t rhetorical questions. We have to assume that Lieberman paid the guys named above (click to enlarge slightly) to find hosting, and “2 Dog Media” went with the cheapest option available..."

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:16:47 -0800

Ok, so how does a DoS attack take out site on a shared server? DoS just means denial of service. It could be something like requesting a bunch of data off the server in order to make the page blow its quotas. That wouldn't affect other pages. Or it could affect something that one page needs, and another doesn't, like a java servlet container or MySQL or something. It's certainly possible.

By: The Jesse Helms

The Jesse Helms — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:18:41 -0800

For the interested: http://packetstormsecurity.nl/DoS/

By: scottreynen

scottreynen — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:18:45 -0800

I want to know what Ted Stevens thinks about this TANGLED UP TUBES! not a truck It's all so clear now. Clearly Stevens has diverted oil from the troubled Alaska tube to the tubes connecting Lieberman's website in retaliation for Lierberman's debate comments against bridge to nowhere, despite earlier voting for it.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:54:00 -0800

I so wish I lived in Connecticut right now, just so I could vote that lying, crass, manipulative, thug-machine politician-zombie out of office. You can replace "Connecticut" with any state in which someone is running for retention this year. I take your point, though. Contrary to what pundits are saying, this is not all about Iraq, or even about the Bush kiss or the Hannity ... well, the Hannity getting to third base. It's about the entitlement associated with incumbency, the fact that Joe feels like he owns his seat and that the primary challenger is stealing what is rightfully his. The inevitable backlash when Joe tries to run as an independent will shift the meme from Bush-enabler to incumbency addict.

By: furiousxgeorge

furiousxgeorge — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:55:51 -0800

See, I don't understand the Kos quotes here. First: "They are paying $15/month for hosting at a place called MyHostCamp, with a bandwidth limit of 10GB. MyHostCamp is currently down, along with all their clients. " Followed by: "DoS attacks don't affect particular accounts on a server. They bring down the whole server. The attack site is up, their campaign site is down. This isn't a DoS attack." Anyway, this looks like a DoS attack to me. But any random script kiddie can pull that off, kinda pointless to go blaming Lamont.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:00:55 -0800

National Review blog:

"Joe2006.com was setup by Dan Geary who has an e-mail address at Hotmail and no discernable website. Likely, someone in the Lieberman camp knew Geary to be 'technical' and someone who could help out. I’ve never heard of myhostcamp and I’ve been working with websites and website providers a long time, making it possible that Geary personally knows, or is even involved with, the myhostcamp.com hosting company. While it’s possible that someone actually hacked joe2006.com, from what I’ve seen, this seems to be the least likely option. More likely, this whole episode started last night with a simple over-usage of bandwidth....This looks to be simply the work of an inexperienced technical consultant...." more ...

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:11:48 -0800

According to dailykos's interpretation of Lieberman's SEC filings, Lieberman's campaign paid $1500 to a company called "two dog media" to manage their web presence. this appears to be 2dog's website.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:14:52 -0800

My own googling also turned up this company also called 2dog media.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:15:43 -0800

The second one is based in CT and has some CT clients.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:20:18 -0800

As has been noted above, others find that the Lieberman camp's e-mail is indeed working.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:20:57 -0800

I just read that they're gonna use this to try to justify the Independent run in November--the Lieberman for Lieberman ticket.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:23:03 -0800

The second one is based in CT and has some CT clients. That is indeed the company listed on the FEC forms -- and located in Rocky Hill, CT -- as per above in the Wonkette posting.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:26:13 -0800

Other clients of the Rocky Hill, CT '2 Dog Media' include:

Diane Farrell for Congress Norwalk Democrats Senator Bill Finch

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:31:16 -0800

You can replace "Connecticut" with any state in which someone is running for retention this year. Stipulated.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:33:48 -0800

So -- according to the FEC forms, 2 Dog Media was paid on 06/08/2006 ("date of disbursement") by "Friends of Joe Lieberman, 2006" $1,482.50 ($980 + $502.50) for "web hosting and web changes.' If much of the info that is coming out is indeed accurate, it does appear that 2 Dog Media subcontracted and co-located the hosting to MyHostCamp, securing a $15/month deal. Hmmm. Where does the sampaign's technical consultant, Dan Geary, fit into all of this? Who indeed was/is responsible for technical management? Geary, 2 Dog Media, MyHostCamp -- or, even, www.theplanet.com where apparently MyHostCamp was renting server space?

By: sfts2

sfts2 — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:35:36 -0800

I find it hilarious the ridiculous coverage that this campaign is getting and the play that this particular story is getting. Plus, who gives a crap about his campaign site, its fucking election day! Do you guys get it that Ned Lamont is a Greenwich millionaire? George Bush is a Greenwich millionaire. Talk about swallowing the BS hook, line, and sinker. Bushco is smiling if Lamont wins. There is more to being a State Senator than Lieberman's position on the war, which by the way was shared by many Dem senators. Being from CT, Lamont winning is probably not a good thing. You are talking about removing the ex-VP candidate on a ticket that WON, and putting in some clown who wasn't able to succeed as a Greenwich First Selectman. Sheesh.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:39:02 -0800

sfts2, removing Lieberman means removing Bush and the GOP's best patsy--he's supported them, he's for going into Iran and Syria, he's against Affirmative Action, he's for School Vouchers, etc--Lieberman is out of step not only with Democrats in Connecticut but with the vast majority of voters in Connecticut entirely. Lamont is an unknown, but given who helped get him in, we won't be seeing the same behavior, believe me.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:42:20 -0800

Do you guys get it that Ned Lamont is a Greenwich millionaire? Yeah -- so, what? I'm more interested in his policy stance, a change in direction for our national Senate (not *State Senate*), etc. than his pocketbook. While we're on the topic Lieberman is also a millionaire. Granted, not from Fairfield County, but just up the tracks in New Haven.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:42:47 -0800

Anyway, this looks like a DoS attack to me.¹

Presuming you're not equating high volume, legitimate traffic, like the Slashdot Effect, with a denial of service attack, would you mind taking a few minutes share what evidence you've seen that lead you to conclude this? Please consider the following in your response:

Whatever has happened, it's certainly not a simple drain the available bandwidth attack, as the other sites hosted on the same IP have run without interruption.
The mail server, as eriko demonstrates, is perfectly operable despite claims otherwise.

My bet is technical ignorance followed by Gertein's patented political opportunism. The site had received very little traffic recently. The last time, and really only, time the site had significant traffic, during the age of the the bear-cub ad, the site was also down. Given the Alexa graph of page views, I suspect they had a couple of other outages. On the eve of the election, they hit the dreaded built-in bandwidth usage limit in cPanel. Not knowing or understanding this, they panicked and started looking for possible solutions to their problem. Gerstein and Smith, along with their technical consultant, unable to come up with a better technical solution, find a politically convenient solution: evil, liberal hackers. They admit they have no evidence of Lamont's involvement and they don't make it clear at any point they have evidence of a denial of service attack. Of course, I'm speculating given the publicly available information and some knowledge of how a denial of service attack might work, but I see no evidence contradicting my conclusions at this point with one possible exception: Alexa doesn't show a spike in traffic for yesterday. Of course, Alexa is not all that accurate and not necessarily up to date through last night at midnight.

Being from CT, Lamont winning is probably not a good thing.²

In a few hours we'll find out if most of Connecticut's Democrat's agree with you as long as Lieberman doesn't contest the election. However, Lieberman, as you know from his vice presidential run in 2000, does have a history of contesting elections. As for your assertion that it's a bad thing for any state for any candidate to win a primary: that's just plain absurd. Winning a primary means nothing to the state The winner still has to win the election.

By: Kickstart70

Kickstart70 — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:44:26 -0800

It's truly amazing the utter crap some people are spouting in this thread. 1) A DDoS attack can last many days. One of our major clients was off for most of a week due to one. 2) A DDoS attack generally does not cause a lot of logs to go back and look at. That's because most of the overwhelm the pipe, and when the pipe is full and the routers are overloaded nothing gets to the server. Further, a DistributedDoS attack is almost impossible to fight or to track down the culprits. Don't be surprised if no answer is every given for this attack. 3) It's entirely possible that the webhost took the site down due to excessive bandwidth charges or to stop the DDoS. Whether the other sites on the same IP address are still up is immaterial, since the DDoS may be effectively over now. What I'd like to know is whether they were UP when Leiberman's site went DOWN. 4) It's also entirely possible that someone less than honourable at the webhost took him offline. That ventures into conspiracy-theory levels though. I've been a working sysadmin for nearing 16 years now. Please don't accept claims from people whose only experience is running IE on their home cable account.

By: Kickstart70

Kickstart70 — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:45:57 -0800

(if indeed it was an attack at all, of course)

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:49:25 -0800

Please don't accept claims from people whose only experience is running IE on their home cable account. We're listening to the media spread Lieberman's unsubstantiated accusations all over the world, and they're not checking into them at all--as usual. ... FYI to the Lieberman campaign: filing false criminal complaints can result in criminal charges being filed against the person making bogus allegations. So if you plan on filing complaints all over the state, you’d best be certain that you can back them up with facts. Smoke and mirrors may work with a complacent media, but it doesn’t cut it with a judge or an over-worked prosecutor and criminal investigators. They don’t find false complaints remotely amusing.

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:53:12 -0800

Do you guys get it that Ned Lamont is a Greenwich millionaire? George Bush is a Greenwich millionaire. Talk about swallowing the BS hook, line, and sinker. Bushco is smiling if Lamont wins. John Kerry's worth $164 million. Dianne Feinstein's worth over $26 million. Ted Kennedy's worth close to $10 million. Barbara Boxer's worth over a million. Most members of the Senate are millionaires. The ones who aren't make $154k a year in salary.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:54:15 -0800

This will be the live updated vote count from CT--polls close at 8 (in 5 minutes)

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:55:20 -0800

Millionaires populate U.S. Senate.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:07:48 -0800

Here's a list that is 3 years old. The numbers are the lowest possible estimates of net worth and do not include primary residences. Ned's $90 million baseline would put him in third place - proving that cable TV is no match for ketchup or department stores. Joementum's baseline is something like $500K, with a max of $1.8M. (I tend to measure value to our country in the number of military lives spared rather than net worth, but YMMV.) John Kerry, D-Massachusetts: $163,626,399 Herb Kohl, D-Wisconsin: $111,015,016 John Rockefeller, D -West Virginia: $81,648,018 Jon Corzine, D-New Jersey: $71,035,025 Dianne Feinstein, D-California: $26,377,109 Peter Fitzgerald, R-Illinois: $26,132,013 Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey $17,789,018 Bill Frist, R-Tennessee: $15,108,042 John Edwards, D-North Carolina: $12,844,029 Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts: $9,905,009 Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico: $7,981,015 Bob Graham, D-Florida: $7,691,052 Richard Shelby, R-Alabama: $7,085,012 Gordon Smith, R-Oregon: $6,429,011 Lincoln Chafee, R-Rhode Island: $6,296,010 Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska: $6,267,028 Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee: $4,823,018 Mike DeWine, R-Ohio: $4,308,093 Mark Dayton, D-Minnesota: $3,974,037 Ben Campbell, R-Colorado: $3,165,007 Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska: $2,963,013 Olympia Snowe, R-Maine: $2,955,037 James Talent, R-Missouri: $2,843,031 Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania: $2,045,016 Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire: $1,916,026 John McCain, R-Arizona: $1,838,010 James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma: $1,570,043 John Warner, R-Virginia: $1,545,039 Kay Bailey Hutchison, R - Texas: $1,513,046 Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky: $1,511,017 Harry Reid, D-Nevada: $1,500,040 Sam Brownback, R-Kansas: $1,491,018 Thomas Carper, D-Delaware: $1,482,017 Ted Stevens, R-Alaska: $1,417,013 Maria Cantwell, D-Washington: $1,264,999 Barbara Boxer, D-California: $1,172,003 Orrin Hatch, R-Utah: $1,086,023 Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana: $1,080,014 Bill Nelson, D-Florida: $1,073,014 Charles Grassley, R-Iowa: $1,016,024

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:08:28 -0800

Failure to preview, number 20496, offense, 15 yards, first down.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:09:02 -0800

... The argument the Lieberman campaign appears to be making, then, is that though they don't have any evidence that Lamont supporters are behind the attack, the candidate himself should demand a cessation of the attack from any supporters who might have done it.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:10:22 -0800

Where did all of Kohl's money come from ? I know Kerry married it, and Corzine was Wall St., and Rockefeller is a Rockefeller.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:12:17 -0800

Kohl's money. I got some decent everyday sneakers for cheap!

By: aaronetc

aaronetc — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:12:25 -0800

I don't know everything about Kohl, but his family owns (or owned) Kohl's clothing stores (and formerly also food stores). Currently I believe he also owns the Milwaukee Bucks.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:26:37 -0800

This story makes quite the statement about the priorities of the Lieberman campaign. $500 initial investment and $100 a month, backed up by a competent developer, gets you a dedicated 1U server with an account that can handle dozens of GB of bandwidth a month. But of course if your, er, "technical consultant" would rather have your site hosted on a cheapo $15/month plan on a server that also hosts all sorts of other sites, you're pretty much SOL -- which is the price of making bad decisions when it comes to hiring the guy who's going to run the online part of your campaign. Not much to do in that case except to make wild and potentially slanderous accusations against your opponent and hoping that the voters will be fooled.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:27:46 -0800

ahhh--we even have those around here now--thanks.

By: jefbla

jefbla — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:29:47 -0800

This will be the live updated vote count from CT--polls close at 8 (in 5 minutes) Site's not working. Probably hacked by Lamont.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:31:04 -0800

From amberglow's link, FIRST (partial) RESULTS ARE IN: Windham County: 66 Lieberman, 126 Lamont!

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:31:56 -0800

Site's not working. Probably hacked by Lamont. Just before it crashed, the site showed one county reporting in--66 votes for Lieberman, 126 for Lamont. Heckuva turnout.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:32:17 -0800

Curses!

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:36:21 -0800

From wtnh tv: Precincts Reporting: 29 of 757 precincts (4%) Candidate Votes Vote % Joe Lieberman 4,586 40% Ned Lamont 6,814 60%

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:37:12 -0800

Kos has an update diary--maybe everyone isn't allowed to use that results site or something?

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:37:43 -0800

WTNH's results can be found here.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:37:57 -0800

I didn't even know we had a Windham County. The biggies are Hartford, New Haven, and Fairfield.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:40:06 -0800

Wasn't Lamont projected to do better in the cities, Lieberman in the rural areas?

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:40:12 -0800

The Courant seems to have the freshest numbers

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:42:30 -0800

J O E M E N T U - - - oh, never mind

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:45:49 -0800

Unconfirmed report Lieberman has lost his own precinct.

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:46:23 -0800

That result site works for me, just goes in and out occasionally. So far: Lieberman - 352, Lamont - 500

By: MrCheese!!!

MrCheese!!! — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:49:44 -0800

Personally, I don't think losing the election is enough at this point. Is there some form of public shaming we can move on to now?

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:52:06 -0800

11% reporting: Lieberman - 14,870; Lamont - 19,257.

By: swell

swell — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:54:48 -0800

Windham County - Lieberman 138, Lamont 126 The lessons of 2000 are not lost on Joe...

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:56:53 -0800

That result site says Windham - Lieberman - 202, Lamont - 370.

By: weston

weston — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:59:25 -0800

Site's not working. Probably hacked by Lamont. Actually, it looks more like someone else didn't pay for enough resources to serve their site. :)

Error An unexpected error has occurred on this page.The system administrators have been notified. The error occurred in: http://www.statementofvote-sots.ct.gov/StatementOfVote/WebModules/ReportsLink/USSenCountyView.aspx?Parameter=08/08/2006-Primary Error Message: A Crystal Reports job failed because a free license could not be obtained in the time allocated. More licenses can be purchased direct from Crystal Decisions or through the Crystal Decisions Online Store.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:01:38 -0800

Official results, Sec'y of State site: Joseph Lieberman Ned Lamont Fairfield 0 0 Hartford 0 0 Litchfield 47 78 Middlesex 215 300 New Haven 0 0 New London 71 74 Tolland 0 0 Windham 202 370 Total 535 822 Hartford Courant results: U.S. Senate - - Dem Primary 106 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 14.17% Name Party Votes Pct Lamont, Ned Dem 25,969 57.79 Lieberman, Joe Dem 18,968 42.21

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:02:46 -0800

Just keep refreshing, it'll work. Lamont - 918, Lieberman - 535

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:04:41 -0800

Kickstart 70: A DDoS attack generally does not cause a lot of logs to go back and look at. That's because most of the overwhelm the pipe, and when the pipe is full and the routers are overloaded nothing gets to the server. Okay, so what you're saying is that if my website is the target of a DDoS attack I won't be able to see anything on my IP logs, not even any initial activity or requests? How about a cut off point where the server stops? Does the router generate a log or record of bandwidth usage w/ timestamp that would indicate either a DDoS or simply a massive spike in traffic? If the other sites on that IP did stay up the whole time (and can show IP Logs) even when the alleged DDoS attack first hit joe2006.com, than does that mean that this whole DDoS thing is indeed a load of BS? Thx.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:06:44 -0800

This site is nice and speedy. 56% for Ned with 17% reporting.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:11:13 -0800

According to this live blog from the Ned Lamont headquarters in Meriden, with 25% of precincts reporting (189 out of 748), the race has tightended to 54.5% (approximately 47k votes) for Lamont and 45.5% (approximately 39k votes) for Lieberman. (See corrected entry.) The Current is reporting:

160 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 21.39%
Lamont, Ned, 35,942, 56.01%
Lieberman, Joe, 28,227, 43.99%

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:22:29 -0800

Hrm, the live blogging results aren't matching with The Courant results at 25%. According to the Courant:

89 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 25.27%
Lamont, Ned, 40,934, 55.09%
Lieberman, Joe,	33,375, 44.91%

The live blogging now reports:

UPDATE: 253 precincts in, 60K votes for Lamont, 50K for Lieberman.

That's 33.8% of precincts reporting, 54.5% for Lamont, 45.5% for Lieberman.

By: The Bellman

The Bellman — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:27:18 -0800

The NYT website is updating. 38% reporting 46.4% for Lieberman, 53.6% for Lamont. Gonna be close.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:32:41 -0800

Lamontmentum? Joedgement Day? ; >

By: sourbrew

sourbrew — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:32:54 -0800

I want to see a district by district analysis. where's my real time democracy? that said, i was really hoping for a 12 % point blow out for Lamont, I have a feeling that Lieberman might win by a couple of percentage points but be behind all the way untill about 85% of precincts reporting. In what will be an eerily similar finish to Kerry - Bush 04

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:33:03 -0800

376 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 50.27%
Lamont, Ned, 70,444, 52.13%
Lieberman, Joe, 64,700, 47.87%

From The Courant, again.

By: fourcheesemac

fourcheesemac — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:35:24 -0800

Gonna be close? It's a drubbing so far. Go Ned GO!

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:35:28 -0800

Jesus, when Lieberman loses, the netheads are going to have a field day with this hosting trouble metaphor.

By: psmealey

psmealey — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:35:40 -0800

You are talking about removing the ex-VP candidate on a ticket that WON, and putting in some clown who wasn't able to succeed as a Greenwich First Selectman. Pfft. Like being a US Senator is hard? Come on buddy, give me a break. The hardest thing about being a Senator is getting elected to be one, If Tom Coburn can be a Senator, fuck, I think Ned Lamont is more than qualified. This Lamont fellow seems like a reasonable guy, he's well-connected, he's smart, and he supports policies I actually believe in. And unlike that other Greenwich millionaire I who's been living in the White House for 5+ years, he took a bit of family money and actually made more with it by building his own company. I'll take this to mean that he's competent, can handle conflict, perhaps build consensus, and can think on his feet. I'll take that any day of the week over Holy Joe's arrogance and demagoguery.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:39:16 -0800

With 54% counted, Lieberman has closed to within 4%.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:40:38 -0800

Looks like it's going to be a nailbiter.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:41:24 -0800

Anyone see anything worth responding to in this comment at Wonkette? ...I suspect Lieberman's not really getting hosting from myhostcamp.com--he only thinks he is. His "host", myhostcamp.com, is probably a reseller, buying hosting from another company and then reselling shared bandwidth to the Lieberman campaign (along with 72 other clients, from what I can gather). The reason Lieberman's site is down is the reason EVERYONE "hosted" by myhostcamp.com is down (including myhostcamp.com, which is the tipoff to what's going on). It's because myhostcamp.com has an automatic suspension on their account when they exceed a preset bandwidth limit, and interest in Lieberman's campaign made them hit the limit, bringing Lieberman's site, and all the other myhostcamp.com clients down at the same time. That's why, when you go to myhostcamp.com with Firefox, it gives you the error: "Can't connect to www.suspended.page". myhostcamp.com's account has been suspended by THEIR host. Make sense? I suspect if you contact myhostcamp.com, they'll probably deny being a reseller, but it wouldn't take much to track down their host if they're reselling.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:42:02 -0800

Hartford and Fairfield are leaning toward Lamont, New Haven toward Lieberman.

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:45:16 -0800

All these important towns have no returns yet. Greenwich New Haven New London New Millford Norwalk Stamford Hartford

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:46:24 -0800

The reason Lieberman's site is down is the reason EVERYONE "hosted" by myhostcamp.com is down (including myhostcamp.com, which is the tipoff to what's going on).

One problem: the other 72 sites were not down.

By: dances_with_sneetches

dances_with_sneetches — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:47:16 -0800

I like this race. Notice it is 100% counted. State House - District 41 - Dem Primary 4 of 4 Precincts Reporting - 100.00% Name Party Votes Pct Schmidt, Rita Dem 457 34.60 Wright, Elissa Dem 456 34.52 Now that's close.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:47:28 -0800

52-48 now----i bet it'll be really close and Lieberman will call for a recount.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:48:28 -0800

oh, dances--imagine if Wright voted for the other one out of some noble impulse! how awful!

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:48:50 -0800

484 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 64.71%
Lamont, Ned, 89,814, 51.60%
Lieberman, Joe, 84,231, 48.40%

One more time from The Courant.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:50:43 -0800

[Thanks, sequential; I've been jumping around in these pages too much.]

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:51:21 -0800

Unsubstantiated rumors from the evil liberals:

MAJOR UPDATE: 80% OF THE VOTE COUNTED: 117K VOTES FOR LAMONT, 103K FOR LIEBERMAN. Someone calculate this! CT Blogger is saying, "It's over." Let's wait and see.

As a side note, he's gotten about every update wrong. He's just posting what he's hearing in the Lamont HQ evil liberal room.

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:52:11 -0800

484 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 64.71% Name Party Votes Pct Lamont, Ned Dem 89,814 51.60 Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 84,231 48.40 Closer than I thought it would be...Big cities still need to report though.

By: Lazlo Hollyfeld

Lazlo Hollyfeld — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:52:35 -0800

Conneticut Bob claims 80% in Lamont 117000 Lieberman 103000

By: nyxxxx

nyxxxx — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:53:36 -0800

A large part of my income depends on having a working server. So not only have I picked the best and most reliable server for my hosting, I've also picked the best backup server, with a completly different company, in a different part of the country. And not only that I've also backed up all files for my sites. So if there is some sort of problem with the main host I don't have to do any thing but change the dns. I would think the big boys would do the same thing.

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 18:53:40 -0800

Sorry, should've previewed.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:00:27 -0800

hey, are the Casino workers Union? There are tons of new voters since 2000 in and around New London.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:05:05 -0800

Anybody know if anyone's blogging from Lieberman's headquarters? What's the mood like there?

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:05:12 -0800

I expect that Lieberman will win the democratic party's nomination... albeit with a very thin margin of victory, and subsequently weak mandate. Any margin of victory=strong mandate in America. If Lieberman wins tonight by a hundredth of a percent he won't learn a goddam thing from it. The people who voted for Lamont won't be invited into the big tent because there isn't one.

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:07:01 -0800

EarBucket writes "Anybody know if anyone's blogging from Lieberman's headquarters? What's the mood like there?" http://ctbob.blogspot.com/

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:09:19 -0800

That's from Lamont's HQ isn't it?

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:09:23 -0800

Jesus, when Lieberman loses, the netheads are going to have a field day with this hosting trouble metaphor. An interesting observation:

"[N]o matter what happens later today, Wednesday will be the worst day of press for the progressive netroots in years. If Lamont loses, we will be branded as ineffectual, irrelevant, extremist, and destructive. If Ned Lamont wins, we will be branded as powerful, relevant, extremist, and destructive."

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:09:31 -0800

er, right

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:10:39 -0800

114k-106k Lamont up and 80 percent in, according to the Courant.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:12:28 -0800

NedLamontBlog LamontBlog ConnecticutBlog MyLeftNutmeg

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:12:29 -0800

Interesting perspective, though. Sounds like Lamont's getting ready to make an announcement.

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:12:45 -0800

C-SPAN is carrying WFSB coverage on and off, for anyone outside of CT who want to watch.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:13:40 -0800

are the Casino workers Union?

When I lived in New London, in 1998, they were not yet unionized. According to this report, though, it appears there has been some positive movement. The UNITE HERE site has a Local 217 in New London, but I can't find a single mention of either local casino on their site.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:14:38 -0800

In other news, Cynthia McKinney's looking pretty shaky down in Georgia. Johnson's leading her by more than 20%.

By: dances_with_sneetches

dances_with_sneetches — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:14:54 -0800

I did a quick calculation. With 220,000 votes counted and 80% of the votes in, Lieberman will need about 56% of the remaining votes to pull ahead. Very doable depending on whether they are strongholds of his.

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:16:26 -0800

I'll be interested to see the town by town, but I'll wager Lieberman hasn't lead a single population center by that percentage.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:20:02 -0800

82.62% reporting in: Lamont at 51.83%, Lieberman at 48.17%.

By: Lazlo Hollyfeld

Lazlo Hollyfeld — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:20:47 -0800

With 82.62 in Lieberman would now have to get 58.7% of the remainder.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:21:01 -0800

LIEBERMAN LOSES DEM PRIMARY At least according to everyone's favorite website.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:21:01 -0800

Ha! The Reverend Jesse Jackson is at Lamont headquarters and he's speechifying to the local news reporter. She doesn't know how to deal with it.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:21:59 -0800

Most everything is in except for Hartford and some of its suburbs. Bridgeport pulled 50/50, so if Hartford trends the same, it's a wrap.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:22:10 -0800

This scenario is the worst of all world for Democrats, unfortunately. Prominent dems and donors will be more reluctant to support Lamont in the general, making the party look divided, and the race will inevitably suck up money that could be better spent elsewhere. Lieberman will be forced to tack right, leading him to criticize the party even more than he has been. And the inevitable media attention that will continue to follow this particular race will prevent the 2006 elections from being nationalized.

By: Lazlo Hollyfeld

Lazlo Hollyfeld — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:22:38 -0800

And I know nobody form out of state is watching the governor's primary, but wow that one is close.

By: mr_roboto

mr_roboto — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:24:38 -0800

gsteff writes "And the inevitable media attention that will continue to follow this particular race will prevent the 2006 elections from being nationalized." When the #1 issue in this race is the Iraq war? As I see it, a focus on Iraq (and away from immigration, gay marriage, and activist judges) can only help the dems.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:24:41 -0800

Jodi Rell will cream whichever one of them wins, so it's not been heavily reported on. I support Malloy over Destefano mostly because Malloy is slightly less likely to end up in jail by the end of his term.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:24:48 -0800

Lamont continues to edge ahead ever so slightly as more votes come in. I think it's over.

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:25:57 -0800

Wow Lazlo, you're not kidding...Malloy within 2k, he made up a lot of ground.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:28:46 -0800

Lazlo Hollyfeld, a pre-recorded Maloy called my house three times today to let me know that turnout was, in chronological order of the calls: "historically low", "very low", and "lower than expected". Oh, and he wanted me to vote for him.

By: WhipSmart

WhipSmart — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:32:08 -0800

he called me too... and I live in Arkansas... talk about desperation...

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:34:19 -0800

OMG the Jesse Jackson interview was beautiful, by the way. It just aired on C-SPAN.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:37:54 -0800

thanks sequential. if Lieberman loses tonight, everyone from Reid to Clinton (both of them) to Kennedy to Boxer to... will call him tomorrow and make him not run as an independent--he won't dare blow them all off--it'll kill his post-politics life leaving only Fox News. And it'll give him the opportunity to go out with dignity, instead of as a fool. McKinney was purposely sacrificed--i heard none of the DC crowd gave her money or support at all.

By: scottreynen

scottreynen — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:41:12 -0800

Did they take a counting break at 84%? Seems like it's been a long time since the numbers changed.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:44:41 -0800

scottreynen, there's been a few updates since 84%, but they've been small. We're at 87% or so now at The Courant, with Lamont gaining a few hundreths of a percent between 84% of precincts reporting and now.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:44:42 -0800

Americablog seems to have the most recent numbers, and their server's a lot more resilient than some of these others.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:44:46 -0800

amberglow, are you predicting that Lieberman won't run as an independent? That's a bet I'd happily take. Regardless of whether its good for the party or not, he's going to. And besides, Schumer has already suggested that he'll support Lieberman's run. He might have changed his mind if Lamont won with a bigger margin, but at 3%, no way. I'm not happy about it either, but if you think Lieberman is dropping out, you're crazy.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:47:16 -0800

Geez, now they have Al Sharpton in there. Lieberman's on "breath support". And Hilary "better keep jumping on Rumsfeld". Guess they have to use something to fill their time... I think they're the only station that's doing TV coverage all night.

By: empath

empath — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:49:08 -0800

The turnout is ridiculous, it looks like 3 or 4 times the number that voted in the 2004 primary.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:50:58 -0800

Huh. Supposedly, the only people left at Lieberman's headquarters are reporters. Must be lonely.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:52:00 -0800

"[Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey]... said that if Sen. Joe Lieberman loses his primary Tuesday by a significant margin, he expects the Connecticut lawmaker to abandon plans to run as an independent."

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:52:24 -0800

I could definitely see Clinton asking Lieberman not to run. As for Schumer supporting Lieberman that just makes no sense at all. Where did you get that? It would be political suicide for Schumer here in New York.

By: bim

bim — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:53:06 -0800

Lieberman may start a run as an independent but his money will dry up and the other Dems will start to abandon the ship. Sooner or later Dodd and Bubba and others will convince Joe to fall on his sword. Maybe even Clinton will go down for a nice photo op with Joe as he wuthdraws. I'm really loving all this !!!

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:54:15 -0800

Poll: Lieberman Should Bow Out Entirely If He Loses Tuesday Primary

"...63 percent of those polled said they thought Lieberman should not run as an independent candidate if he loses the primary, as the senator has said he will. Only 24 percent said Lieberman should stay in the race if he can't win his party's nomination." [The Day | New London | August 5, 2006]

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:54:55 -0800

The Courant is saying Lamont 51% and Leiberman 48% at 93.85% counted.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:55:16 -0800

Time Magazine: Why the GOP May Not Be Able to Capitalize on a Lieberman Loss.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:55:22 -0800

Lieberman just had a two tenths of a percent jump in the last 2% of reported precincts. It's not over. 10%+ left to report and 8k votes separate the candidates. Correction, latest update from The Courant:

702 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 93.85%
Lamont, Ned, 134,942, 51.65%
Lieberman, Joe, 126,330, 48.35%

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:56:31 -0800

Dailykos thread is down...Obviously, it is a nefarious act on the part of the Lieberman campaign.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:56:56 -0800

Support for an Independent Run Unlikely from Fellow Senate Democrats, Should Lieberman Lose.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:57:20 -0800

See here re: schumer and the DSCC on an independent run.

By: bim

bim — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:58:22 -0800

Dkos is a mess. The site barely moves. It's taking the edge off my enjoyment, dammit.

By: icosahedral

icosahedral — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:58:29 -0800

We're going to be breaking some news shortly on the Lieberman mystery site outage. Stay tuned

Something's stirring at talkingpointsmemo.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:59:11 -0800

By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, Lieberman needs 75% of the remaining votes to pull even.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 19:59:43 -0800

gsteff, I think a loss by Lieberman tonight will shake his campaign to the core. They never planned on losing, and the petitioning candidacy was calculated by his campaign to have no affect on his bid for reelection. That's amateurish at best and ignorant at worst. I don't know what Senator Lieberman will do if he were to lose, but for the sake of the opposition party, I'd hope Senator Lieberman's ego recognizes the problems an independent bid would cause for the party he claims to belongto. Think of it, local Democrats choose a new person to represent them in an election. Certain national Democrats think the local Democrats are wrong. That's not an attitude you want to have with voters while your party is trying to take control of at least one branch of the government in this upcoming election. I expect more party unity than your dystopian view. Senator Lieberman, politics aside, is a smart and pleasant person. When I heard him speak tonight, I could hear the stress and worry in his voice. The again, they drink some strong kool aid in DC.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:02:18 -0800

Word is Lamont's making a victory speech at 11:20.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:02:34 -0800

Lamont pulled to almost 4% with 95.32% reporting, 3.84% to be exact.

By: scottreynen

scottreynen — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:02:35 -0800

51.92 @ 95.32%

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:02:46 -0800

Also... to weigh in, I don't think Lieberman will bow out if he loses this primary. Major Dems will blow their steam but the simple fact is that they aren't voters in CT. Bottom line, Joe can win a three way between now and November. It's unfortunate, but I do think it's true.

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:04:15 -0800

Watching CT local news via C-Span. Joe is conceding the race.

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:04:31 -0800

Lieberman conceding on WFSB

By: WhipSmart

WhipSmart — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:04:42 -0800

WFSB just had coverage of the Lieberman HQ and he has just more or less conceded... he said he called Lamont and congratulated him...

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:05:12 -0800

"We just finished the first half and the Lamont team is ahead." Unbelievable gall. Fuck you Joe, you ain't the Democratic nominee.

By: EarBucket

EarBucket — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:05:16 -0800

I agree that Lieberman's unlikely to bow out. I think the Democratic machine's going to have to swing behind Lamont, though, and that's going to hurt Joe's chances. It'll be an interesting race.

By: icosahedral

icosahedral — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:06:22 -0800

Oh man. Fuck Joe Lieberman.

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:07:36 -0800

"For the sake of my country I cannot let that result stand." Wow, so he's going to save Democracy by telling his party to go fuck itself. Clinton(s), Schumers, Dodds--support this man at your own risk. Now he's saying he's going to "unite, not divide." By running a rogue candidacy.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:07:42 -0800

"We just finished the first half and the Lamont team is ahead."

That respect I had for Senator Lieberman a few posts back? Gone.

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:08:18 -0800

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:08:39 -0800

Wow. He's a world class prick even after his spanking. Time to bring out the heavy weapons.

By: WhipSmart

WhipSmart — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:09:45 -0800

Joe is confirming his run as an independent... and then he talks about unity while flipping off his own party... class, man...

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:10:11 -0800

I'm watching Joe on CSPAN. Wow, what an egotistical bastard. He's saying F you all, I'm running anyway. An independent Democrat? WTF.

By: MegoSteve

MegoSteve — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:10:35 -0800

An Independent Democrat? He has some nerve using the name of the party that just told him that they don't want him as their candidate.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:10:51 -0800

"For the sake of my country I cannot let that result stand." Hi, December 12, 2000 called. It was wondering where that sound bite went.

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:11:19 -0800

Anyone got one of those SORE LOSERMAN signs from a few years back? Now's the time to put it up on eBay.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:11:25 -0800

Now he's saying he's going to "unite, not divide." By running a rogue candidacy.

That sounds so familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on why. *think think think*

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:11:31 -0800

Strip him of all committee seats now. By his own admission, he's no longer a Dem. Ah, money-shot--just referred to himself as "an independent Democrat." Fuck him and any Democrat who supports him. The rat bastard. Oh, and congratulations Ned!

By: Balisong

Balisong — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:11:31 -0800

Who's this Liberman fellow? Is he someone I would need an internet connection to have heard of?

By: MegoSteve

MegoSteve — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:12:04 -0800

And what makes him think that he'd be able to solve anyone's problems as an independent unaffiliated minority. What a lying sack of shit.

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:12:05 -0800

Hacker comment. Another bitch move.

By: WhipSmart

WhipSmart — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:12:14 -0800

still working that "hacked" line, eh, Joe..?

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:12:22 -0800

"You an go to my website, when it is un-hacked" what a bazen ass.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:12:28 -0800

Disclaimer: I supported Lamont in this primary and will support him in the general. They never planned on losing, and the petitioning candidacy was calculated by his campaign to have no affect on his bid for reelection. They obviously did have a plan for him losing; that's why they collected petitions. As for the calculations, they're now irrelevent, he lost the primary. But its very easy to see how Lieberman could calculate that he'll win a 3 way. There are more indepdents in Conneticut than registered Democrats or Republicans, and independents can't vote in the Democratic primary. Lieberman probably figures that he'll win a big chunk of the Democrats, and almost all the independents. I haven't seen a 3 way poll in months, but the last one I saw showed Lieberman winning by a HUGE margin, bigger than any lead he ever had in the Dem primary. Lieberman will stay in as an independent, and his odds are still quite good.

By: sugarfish

sugarfish — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:12:31 -0800

He just said to go to his website "when it is unhacked." God, I'm glad I don't live in CT. Because I would have just vomited everywhere.

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:12:39 -0800

Wow, just invited people to his website "when it is un-hacked." Fucking weasel.

By: icosahedral

icosahedral — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:13:21 -0800

When it is unhacked?! You paid for substandard hosting. The tubes of the internets aren't free, y'know.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:13:40 -0800

By: The Bellman

The Bellman — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:14:40 -0800

Unhack my tubes!

By: rollbiz

rollbiz — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:16:03 -0800

Stay tuned for the good part. Lamont to speak at 1120 by all accounts.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:16:40 -0800

Lieberman's going to get a lot of Republican support, y'all, especially given the problems of the Republican nominee in that Time link ericb posted: At the Republican National Committee meeting in Minneapolis last week, there was talk of how the Democratic split might be exploited. Says one GOP strategist who was at the Minneapolis meetings: "If Lieberman loses the primary and runs as an independent, there are people in Republican circles who want to raise money for him because they agree with him. Then the question is how much acrimony is left over from his excommunication."

By: smackfu

smackfu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:18:32 -0800

It's not exactly like Connecticut's a red state though.

By: ryoshu

ryoshu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:18:37 -0800

For contrast, Gen. JC Christian was blogging from the Lieberman headquarters.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:20:03 -0800

There are more indepdents in Conneticut [sic] than registered Democrats or Republicans... True. "Connecticut has 671,656 Democrats, 449,727 Republicans and 844,433 other registered voters..."

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:20:30 -0800

By the way, everyone, this is not a "three way race." Alan Schlesinger has a gambling problem, has been disavowed by the state Republican establishment, and is polling at something like 8%. The general will be a repeat of Lieberman/Lamont with an influx of Republicans who pretty much agree with Joe on most every issue. Chris Shays actually endorsed Joe a while back.

By: moonbird

moonbird — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:20:46 -0800

Hey Joe, I hear you lost the primary. It must suck, but hey, there's a big market for imitating the guy from Alf what with viral advertising and all. Have fun.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:22:27 -0800

Lieberman's going to get a lot of Republican support Gallup Poll: Lieberman Now More Popular With Republicans Than Democrats.

By: lackutrol

lackutrol — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:25:56 -0800

Joe is willing to risk his party's chances for his own giant ego. "Unite not divide"? Is he intentionally cribbing from Bush's playbook or has it just pervaded his subconscious? It's not so much Joe's support for the war that bothers me (though it does), it's that he believes in "bipartisanship." This is like bringing a knife to a gunfight, then handing the knife to your opponent. When has this administration compromised, Joe? When they stole your homeland security department idea and then used it to bludgeon you? When they didn't even pretend to listen to your small criticisms of how the war has been prosecuted? Joe has been in deep denial about the politics of this country for some time, even though he saw exactly how the adminstration would act when they bullied their way into the White House. And now he's willing to sacrifice a crucial seat to the indignation he feels at being challenged. Disgraceful. Perhaps the worst concession speech I've ever seen. Watch closely--I think the Joementum will disappear as major party figures extract their support for him. He might just get the Republican elected, though, if the cards are right.

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:27:25 -0800

I am so pleased with my paltry $25 investment. Good Bye, Joe.

By: MegoSteve

MegoSteve — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:30:42 -0800

Leave it to Fuckin' Joe Lieberman to once again help the Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

By: lackutrol

lackutrol — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:33:08 -0800

Whoa, whoops, I hadn't heard much about Alan Schlesinger until I posted and saw the link to the Wikipedia page. Serves me right for recoiling in disgust from politics for the past year and a half or so. The guy stands little chance I guess, so I retract my last sentence, but none of the rest.

By: chance

chance — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:34:29 -0800

Liberman is a rat but both parties are splitting apart at the seams, not just the Dems in this primary. The schism the Republicans are facing nation wide is much more profound. It will be a while before this game of musical chairs ends and we see who is sitting where.

By: scottreynen

scottreynen — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:34:31 -0800

I'll be interested to see how the DNC and DSCC position themselves in this race. It's sure to be awkward whatever they do.

By: icosahedral

icosahedral — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:37:28 -0800

Another infamous incumbent bites the dust.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:41:15 -0800

For weeks, over and over he says "I'm a good Democrat. I'm not Bush." and now he's saying "Republicans love me, so they'll vote for me but i'll still be a Democrat"??? Bullshit. He's all about himself, and is just a sad neocon. It's pathetic that CNN is still calling him a moderate Dem--he hasn't been that for years. Moderate Dems aren't recommended by Kristol and other rightwingers for Administration positions. Moderate Dems don't tell other Dems to shut up and not criticize the President. ... Already his phone is ringing and everyone is telling him not to do this--he'll be hanging himself if he does. I bet he doesn't--this is now his last chance to go out with a shred of dignity left instead of as a useful fool for the GOP.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:41:30 -0800

Lieberman's already in the Senate club, so it's possible the DSCC will rally 'round one of their own. The DNC will probably stick with Lamont; either way, it's a pretty safe seat for someone who'd vote for Harry Reid for majority leader if the Dems take the Senate, so it's hard to imagine either group spending much extra money there.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:45:27 -0800

the Clintons, Schumer, Emanuel, Reid, Boxer, Feinstein--everyone is calling him as we type here, telling him to shut up and go home. His life after politics will be empty--except for Fox News-- if he persists in this.

By: buggzzee23

buggzzee23 — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:46:23 -0800

Speaking as someone who is fed up with both the Republican and Democratic parties, I hope Lieberman wins the general election. Screw party loyalty, I want politicians who are loyal to the people they represent and their own convictions. Either party will sell us down the road if they think it will increase their own power base and I find that damn frightening. Maybe, just maybe, we'll get lucky and see more politicians from both parties abandon their party and actually care more about their constituents than their political affiliation.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:47:39 -0800

they can't rally around him, mediareport--even the big money donors will not stand for it--and many millions of us will just go ahead and target all the Senators involved in an asinine decision like that would be. Lieberman will be seen as preventing the possible majority in 06--that will not be allowed to happen. If he runs as an Independent he won't count toward a majority, no matter what bullshit he spouts.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:48:46 -0800

buggzzee23, that's just it---Lieberman has betrayed those who voted for him over and over. He's not at all loyal to the Democrats in CT nor to the people in CT.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:50:10 -0800

I bet he doesn't--this is now his last chance to go out with a shred of dignity left instead of as a useful fool for the GOP. Wrong. This is his last chance to be a four term Senator instead of a three term one. And, if he actually believes that he's helping the country and the party, as he does, this is his last chance to save both from the cesspool of unbridled partisanship. Not saying that I agree, just that your analysis is dumb. Right now, everything depends on the polling. The DSCC will equivocate for a few days until they can get a flash poll of the three way results. If Lieberman still has a big lead, they'll say nice things about Lamont, but won't give him money. If its closer, you'll see more pressure on him. As I mentioned above, the biggest danger in this result isn't that the Dems will lose the seat, its that Lieberman will be forced to tack right for the rest of campaign in order to win, and will undermine other Dems nationwide in the process.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:50:13 -0800

Independent Senators don't get Chairmanships of Committees nor do they get any good assignments and are powerless except to break ties--he's consigning himself to nothingness after crowing about the power he'd have returning as a Dem.

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:52:25 -0800

I think it's just pure fuckin' bravado. Clinton stumped for him and Clinton is going to cash those chips in. I just can't see any democrat with a smidgen of political intelligence going anywhere near him. Dodd, Schumer etc. Joe played the game and he knows how it works and it's time for him to politically do what the Romans generals did when they'd dishonored themselves. I think he'll get a visit from Tom Hagen soon.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:53:15 -0800

Independent Senators don't get Chairmanships of Committees nor do they get any good assignments and are powerless except to break ties Oh really?

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:53:55 -0800

What Joe (and you) don't get is that Democracy is not about the person in the seat but about the voters and what they choose and who they choose. Him being a four-term Senator is not up to him at all. Running as an Independent does not help the Democratic Party at all and he knows it. It helps Joe alone. They work for us. They serve at our will, and the primary voters showed their will tonight. Let him go on with this--let him make his friends choose, and let the chips fall where they may--they won't be falling on his side. Democracy and voting either matters or it doesn't--it doesn't matter only when and if you lose, and then you go off as an Independent.

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:55:26 -0800

The only people who claim the Democratic party is "coming apart at the seams" are Republicans. Seriously, look at who's been lamenting the possibility of a Lamont victory--Ann Coulter and Bill F'ing Kristol, that's who. There are plenty of moderate Dems involved in tightish races this November--don't expect Republicans to back any of them. Lieberman was their ultimate useful idiot. He still has a shot at winning as an Independent, unfortunately, but he's going to have to do so as the obvious opportunist that he is. He's already floated a trial ballon--"I'm an independent Democrat." O RLY? Unlike the other 28 Democratic Senators who voted for the war and yet have managed to remain members of the Democratic party? Unbelievable. And highly amusing. 64K$?: Will and/or when will he be stripped of his committee seats? Because that'll hurt. 64K$? Part 2: What's Hillary drinking right now, and can I have some? Because she's been paddling hard to the right for the last three years in her own version of "Joementum," and this is a shot across her bow for 2008. I was following this live blog tonight--great stuff, including pictures. Final quotation: "We're all quite mad here. We're ready for another battle. We're ready to take our fight to the people of CT again to show Joe the door one last time. Everyone call their representatives tomorrow and tell them to support Ned Lamont."

By: buggzzee23

buggzzee23 — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:56:09 -0800

buggzzee23, that's just it---Lieberman has betrayed those who voted for him over and over. He's not at all loyal to the Democrats in CT nor to the people in CT. posted by amberglow You're on the money about him not being loyal to the party, amberglow, but the jury is still out (IMO) as to whether he represented the people of CT faithfully. One could assume a victory in the general election by Lieberman would mean a majority of the voters in that state agree with his positions. And of course a defeat in the general election would demonstrate he failed at conveying the will of CT's people. Either way, this is going to be a fun campaign to sit back and watch from 3,000 miles away.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:56:32 -0800

Jeffords won't happen to Lieberman, believe me. And Jeffords was a unique case. That kind of deal will be impossible if Lieberman runs as an Independent--he will have hurt the party and stabbed his friends in the back, not to mention sending a giant "FUCK YOU" to the primary voters of his state who made their choice tonight.

By: mr.curmudgeon

mr.curmudgeon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:57:43 -0800

buggzzee23, I want politicians who are loyal to the people they represent and their own convictions. The people he is supposed to represent, the people of Connecticut, just fucking voted him out of the primary. Now Joe's loyalty is only to himself. The prick.

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:58:10 -0800

Contact info for Harry Reid--let him know that Lieberman needs to be stripped of all committee appointments now.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:58:11 -0800

And if Schumer doesn't immediately stand for Lamont he'll be facing a challenge too. All of them will be, especially those in charge of getting a Congressional Majority.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 20:58:37 -0800

thanks, bardic---it has to happen immediately.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:02:07 -0800

I want politicians who are loyal to the people they represent and their own convictions. Roffle. In 2000, Joe was up for re-election in Connecticut. After Gore picked him as his running mate, Joe refused to quit the Senate race, essentially staying on both ballots. The effect would have been, had Joe become VP, Connecticut's Republican governor would have appointed an interim replacement, effectively shifting the balance of power in the Senate away from the Dems and frustrating the legislative agenda of the incoming Gore administration. But by staying on the Senate ballot, Joe was assured that he would keep his political career afloat. How exactly is running for positions in two branches of government at the same time loyal to the people of his state? After all, it hardly takes the political acumen of Joe Lieberman to beat a Republican challenger who purchases the sexual services of 8 year old girls. Joe's been looking out for himself, and nobody else, since his defeating Lowell Weicker in 1988.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:03:14 -0800

It is my sincere hope that everyday Americans, the ones who normally do not vote, get out there and put the boot to every self-serving discompassionate toad that holds power of office. This is the year to enact sweeping changes. Elect people who have honour and compassion.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:03:16 -0800

I'm interested to see what the next three way poll results look like. The last poll is a couple of weeks old now.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:03:17 -0800

MetaFilter: Probably hacked by Lamont.

By: buggzzee23

buggzzee23 — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:03:58 -0800

The people he is supposed to represent, the people of Connecticut, just fucking voted him out of the primary. posted by mr.curmudgeon No, only one segment (those registered to vote as Democrats) of the CT people voted him out of the primary. The entire group of CT voters will pass judgement iin the general election.

By: the_savage_mind

the_savage_mind — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:05:51 -0800

I want politicians who are loyal to the people they represent Well then you definitely don't want Lieberman.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:07:18 -0800

what Saucy Intruder said. Joe is for Joe alone, which is why the party will not support this Independent bid. If the GOP wants to bankroll it (and i bet they do--they love him), then that fact will be made loudly and clearly known to all. Even our pathetic media won't be able to keep calling him a "moderate Democrat" when he's funded entirely by the rightwing. He won't get money from the Democratic Party.

By: sequential

sequential — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:12:00 -0800

the last one I saw showed Lieberman winning by a HUGE margin, bigger than any lead he ever had in the Dem primary.

You're referring to this poll which was three weeks ago. Since then, Lieberman lost the primary and then told Democrats in Connecticut that he was going to unite them by running, moments after the same Democrats told him they didn't want him to represent them. If Lieberman wins, he's winning on the strength of the Bush conservatives. And that's a base I'm not certain I'd want to count on in this next election cycle.

Maybe, just maybe, we'll get lucky and see more politicians from both parties abandon their party and actually care more about their constituents than their political affiliation.

What leads you to believe that Senator Lieberman actually cares about his constituents more now that he's been rejected by the constituents of the party that helped him to power in the last three elections? That's right: nothing. Any politician that abandons their party via a primary loss, but stays in the game could care less about the people they represent. The only thing Senator Lieberman cares about is staying in power. If Gerstein, Smith, and Lieberman think they can win by courting Republicans after 18 years of being a Democrat, and maintain the party loyalty of enough Democrats and independents to win then I hope their ready to spend a fortune on a losing cause. Read this very carefully.

this is his last chance to save both from the cesspool of unbridled partisanship.

Enabling whomever is in power is not bipartisanship, unless we're not talking about democracy here. I hate partisanship as much as, if not more than, most people, but I'm honest enough with myself to see that there hasn't been a sincere bipartisan politician in a long time. I've long held that term limits of two terms or less, preferably less, would lead to better representation and less cesspool.

its that Lieberman will be forced to tack right for the rest of campaign in order to win, and will undermine other Dems nationwide in the process.

Lieberman can't tack much further right on a number of important issues. Furthermore, Lieberman can't harm the party that just rejected him. We'll leave that job up to the DCCC and other Dems that supported him during the primary. We're all waiting on a few weeks of news and polls to establish some trends, but don't be shocked to see that dead cats don't bounce very well. For what it's worth, gsteff, you're a bright bulb. Thanks for getting into it with us tonight. You've kept us honest, no matter who ends up being right.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:12:56 -0800

Evan Bayh (who wants to be Pres in 08) comes out for Lamont: ...That decision was met with squeamishness among many within the party establishment who had signaled that they would not support an independent bid by Lieberman. Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh -- who, like Lieberman, has close ties to moderates within the party but is considering a 2008 presidential bid -- quickly announced he would support Lamont. "Senator Bayh supported Senator Lieberman in the primary because of his respect for Senator Lieberman's service and their long friendship," said Bayh spokesman Dan Pfeiffer. "The Democratic voters of Connecticut have spoken, and Senator Bayh respects their choice and will support their nominee." Expect many more announcements like Bayh's over the next day or two. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) will speak about the race tomorrow. ...

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:14:13 -0800

Apologies, amberglow. I don't mean to be condescending. I wish Lieberman would drop out too, though my main reason is that a 3-way will hurt the Democrats nationally. It is disloyal to the party. But ultimately, Lieberman has as much of a right to run for public office as any of us. If the wrong people get elected, the real blame lies with the voters, not the politicians. Anyway, I hope he gets stripped of his committee positions and gets blackballed by the establishment. I'll be calling some Senators myself tomorrow to support this. Just don't kid yourself that the odds are in Lamont's favor.

By: longsleeves

longsleeves — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:18:38 -0800

Ned Lamont has won the race, I am curious why new news is reported

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:20:49 -0800

Lieberman earlier today: "George Bush ain't on the ballot," said Lieberman. "It's me and the other guy." They picked the other guy, Joe. Go home. With Joe stabbing what he calls "his party" in the back by running, gsteff, it is a much tighter race, of course. I'm confident he'll only be able to do that tho, with GOP help--tomorrow Reid and Schumer will publicly announce that he'll get no support (and hopefully that he's losing all power within the party).

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:23:10 -0800

I just got a Lamont email: We won! There's been a lot said in the media about you, about me and about this race. But let me cut right through it and tell you what just happened. Tonight's results show clearly and overwhelmingly one simple fact: democracy works. Connecticut came alive with participation and passion. Together, Democrats decided that it's time for a change. It's been a spirited campaign, but today we are all Democrats. Unfortunately, though, Joe Lieberman has announced his intention to run as an independent. I've said from the beginning, even when Joe Lieberman had a 50-point lead in the polls, that I would respect the outcome of this race. I even said that if Joe Lieberman won the Democratic nomination, I'd campaign for him through the fall to turn out votes for the Democrat. We Democrats have a process for choosing our nominee, and we all ought to respect the outcome. I hope that over the course of the coming days, Joe's friends, neighbors and constituents will prevail upon him to reconsider and unite with the Democrats across Connecticut who voted for change tonight. Joe needs to hear from you. Please send him a message asking him to respect the voters -- we will deliver your note and post it on our web site: http://www.nedlamont.com/respectvoters (i gave 5 bucks towards his race so now am on his list) : >

By: mr.curmudgeon

mr.curmudgeon — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:23:50 -0800

tomorrow Reid and Schumer will publicly announce that he'll get no support (and hopefully that he's losing all power within the party). If they don't, I'm done with the Democrats. I will not support a party that refuses to support itself.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:26:14 -0800

if they don't, i'm done too, but right after i ensure that Spitzer gets to be Governor here.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:27:32 -0800

If he runs as an Independent he won't count toward a majority, no matter what bullshit he spouts. I understand you don't like him, amberglow (I think he's a despicable politician myself), but the above just seems silly. There are a number of plausible scenarios as of tonight in which Lieberman and the DSCC/big money donors could make a deal, trading Lieberman's vote for Reid (*if* the Dems win the Senate, which seems very unlikely to me) for a relatively neutral DSCC stance during the general election. Not saying it'll happen that way, just that your comments are shading a bit too much into wishful thinking masquerading as certainty. For my taste at this point, anyway.

By: longsleeves

longsleeves — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:30:28 -0800

smooth finish. sorry.

By: lackutrol

lackutrol — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:30:49 -0800

Amberglow, Schumer's hardly a Lieberman. He will stand with Lamont, as will all other Senate Democrats. Whether that amounts to more than lip service will depend on the polls. In any case I cannot imagine the party openly backing the guy that lost the primary.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:32:13 -0800

Lieberman will probably pull an increasingly-common Canuck move: Do a 180° and change parties. He could probably win quite nicely running as a Republican. One of our asswipes (fucking David Emerson, fuck him with razorblades twice over) even did it after being elected!

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:37:10 -0800

Technically, it's too late for Lieberman to run as the official Republican candidate. Of course, he's tacking towards a de facto Republican candidacy. In a state as blue as CT, any Democratic resources spent on Lamont will be matched by an influx of Republican money overtly, and I suspect some sort of Jomentified "unity" non-profit being formed. I'll be really upset if the Democratic party doesn't get behind Lamont not just nominally, but in terms of cash. Joe has a hell of a machine in place and it won't be easy for Lamont. But it won't be "wasted"--the Republicans are facing some pretty harsh financial situations themselves.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:42:36 -0800

Anyone got one of those SORE LOSERMAN signs from a few years back?

By: Navelgazer

Navelgazer — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:50:34 -0800

amberglow: As for Schumer supporting Lieberman that just makes no sense at all. Where did you get that? It would be political suicide for Schumer here in New York. Do we know anything about his challenger? Is it worth it? bardic: 64K$? Part 2: What's Hillary drinking right now, and can I have some? Because she's been paddling hard to the right for the last three years in her own version of "Joementum," and this is a shot across her bow for 2008. Good to see you back, bardic. Hillary's sitting pretty on her re-election, and doesn't have to test the waters for a while yet, so I don't know. Still, New Hampshire might be a lost cause.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:50:53 -0800

mediareport, the mood of Democratic voters all over the country will not allow a deal at all. Especially primary voters. It will be seen the thing that stopped the party from gaining a majority--trust me.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:52:21 -0800

Schumer's not up for a while yet. Hillary's challenger, Tasini, already has my vote.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:54:17 -0800

There are a very few senate democrats who have said they'd support Lieberman. Salazar from CO is one, IIRC.

By: gsteff

gsteff — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:55:43 -0800

A final note, to return to the original topic of the thread: TPM Muckraker has posted their evening update. The quick rundown: the Lieberman campaign had a hosting contract for around $150 a month, not the $15 a month that Kos claimed. The site was also managed inhouse, not by 2 Dog Media, as Kos claimed (their original site had been done by 2 Dog Media, but they ended that relationship two months ago). Their contract provided approximately 400 GB of bandwidth a month, and the outage today was definitely the result of an attack, not a bandwidth overage. The parent hosting provider, The Planet, claims that they provide at least two levels of defense against DoS attacks, which would seem to make that vector less likely. Like I said above, I can't wait to see Kos's apology. That said, its also blatantly obvious that the Lieberman campaign made no attempt to get the site back up, and milked this for all it was worth.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:59:24 -0800

Lieberman's speech the other day: ... Or ask Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Barbara Boxer, John Lewis, State Treasurer Denise Nappier, Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, state AFL-CIO President John Olsen, and dozens of other national and state Democratic leaders who have endorsed me – including many who opposed the war in Iraq. ...

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:01:36 -0800

Well I'll be darned, me and Joe Scarborough agree on something. And he utters the magic number: 1994.

By: ericb

ericb — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:03:35 -0800

Contact info for Harry Reid--let him know that Lieberman needs to be stripped of all committee appointments now.

"Dear Senator Reid: With Senator Joseph Lieberman's loss to Ned Lamont in yesterday's Connecticut primary for the United States Senate -- in which he was running as a representive of the Democratic Party of which I am a proud and registered member -- and his subsequent public statement that he would be abandoning the party to run as an independent candidate this coming November, I call upon you to strip him of all committee appointments effective immediately. He has taken a definitve stance in seeking to run counter to the majority vote of Democrats in Connecticut. Such a position demonstrates a lack of commitment to the party in general. No longer does the Senator deserve the committee positions he holds."

By: lackutrol

lackutrol — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:26:14 -0800

I am no great fan of Hillary these days, but I am pretty damn sure she will trounce any primary or general competitor. While I don't share many of her opinions (the big flag-burning issue!?), she has shown that she can deliver for New York and will crush all comers. She will win again in New York. I hope her terrible national negatives mean she will not get the Democratic nomination in '08, but she does have the best political strategist of the last fifty years (far better than Rove), and perhaps the best president since FDR, in her corner. Dammit. I guess this means I have to be a political junkie for a while again.

By: bardic

bardic — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:36:41 -0800

Andrew Sullivan sees the light as well--Lamont's victory is hardly a blow to Democratic unity. Commenters at LGF? Not so much: "Lamont Wins Nutroots Nomination, Dems Doomed" With friends like Coulter, Bill Kristol, and these guys, one might begin to feel that the Lamont victory isn't much of a death knell.

By: MrCheese!!!

MrCheese!!! — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:37:07 -0800

Personally, I don't think losing the election is enough at this point. Is there some form of public shaming we can move on to now?

By: mediareport

mediareport — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:45:49 -0800

the mood of Democratic voters all over the country Oh, you know that? The mood of Democratic voters all over the country? Amazing. You should start your own polling firm. ;) Again, we agree on a lot, amberglow. I just think you're letting your excitement get in the way a bit, and are making statements that you can't possibly be as certain of as you're claiming to be. Take a breath, wait a few days and then let's see where we are.

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 03:44:13 -0800

MetaFilter: the cesspool of unbridled partisanship

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 04:03:49 -0800

Their contract provided approximately 400 GB of bandwidth a month, and the outage today was definitely the result of an attack, not a bandwidth overage. Eh, assuming their main page had 20kb of data, that only ads up to 200,000 impressions. I could easily see it getting crushed, especially since it did when the bear ad came out. When the returns were comming in dailykos was getting 2,000 hits per minute. If joe's site had the same traffic, they would have used up their monthly bandwidth in about an hour and fourty minutes.

By: cell divide

cell divide — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 06:27:41 -0800

How did we get to the point where opposing the obvious debacle in Iraq means you're a nutcase? Especially when you're a rich, successful, American who embodies all the values the old Republicans cared about?

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 06:27:48 -0800

Eh, assuming their main page had 20kb of data, that only ads up to 200,000 impressions. 400GB / 20k = 20,000,000

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 06:35:05 -0800

the mood of Democratic voters all over the country...Oh, you know that? The mood of Democratic voters all over the country (all voters, actually--all reputable polls show the same trends, and have been doing so for quite a while now--months and months) ...increasing polarization over the Iraq war is what powered the Lamont campaign and it is unclear, without a base in either party, if Mr. Lieberman will be able to find a similar energy source. ...

By: bardic

bardic — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:00:57 -0800

I've soured on DKOS over the last year, if only because there are much, much better librul blogs out there in terms of analysis. But Markos is pretty much on the mark today: "If they really thought Lieberman losing was such a bad thing for the Democratic Party they wouldn't have gone out of their way to prop him up. Instead, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, the wingnutosphere, several Republican congresscritters, and the GOP's Big Money all rallied around their man. This is not a happy day for them." The more I hear GOP'ers and their buddies like Marty Peretz and Lanny Davis whine about Lamont's win, the more I'm certain this was the best thing to happen to Democrats since Clinton got elected in 1992. Actually, it may be even better, since the Republicans took over Congress in 1994. They might get the POTUS in 2008, but November 2006 is looking great. And frankly, with Iraq being the disaster that it is, along with the entirety of the middle east now, four more years of a Republican POTUS wouldn't bother me too much--it'll cement the impression that they're a failed party filled with miserable, failed policies and hacks. Honestly, let 'em have the White House with Democrats finally having real Congressional oversight. McCain will quickly go from "bold maverick" to "Bush II's pooper-scooper" in a few weeks.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:07:12 -0800

NYT Editorial today: ...The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration’s contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home. ... It's time to watch who starts funding Lieberman's run, if he does run (i still say he won't), and to ensure that people know he won't be listed as an "independent Democrat" on the ballot, but as an "Independent".

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:11:40 -0800

bardic, do you read greenwald/unclaimed territory or billmon/whiskeybar? they rock

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:16:03 -0800

... Chris Dodd was tasked with the difficult job of telling Joe he had to go, which he was to commence either last night or this morning according to varying reports. I know Joe has vocal support from DLCers and so-called "centrists" who see themselves next in line if Lieberman falls. They want Joe to hold back the barbarian horde for all of them. It’s a stupid, shortsighted and solipsistic construct. The self-righteous indignation of people like Lanny Davis and Martin Peretz are buoying Lieberman into a wholesale purchase of the myth that he is a great man and a great wrong has been done to him. Here on planet earth we call it a primary challenge, an integral part of the Democratic process. ...

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 07:25:24 -0800

Schumer, Reid Support Lamont (DSCC too) and Hillary gave Lamont 5k.

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 08:46:10 -0800

It's mind-boggling, but this is still being milked. You would think if they were serious about an independent challenge, they'd roll up their sleeves, get the site back up QED and get back to work. They can address this on the homepage. How web illiterate can a campaign be?

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:15:47 -0800

By: Skygazer

Skygazer — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:25:00 -0800

For the record as of 12:25 PM EST August 9. Joe2006.com consists of one page with only the following statement: UPDATE ON THE ATTACK ON THE LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN WEBSITE STATEMENT FROM SEAN SMITH: "For the past 24 hours the Friends for Joe Lieberman's website and email has been totally disrupted and disabled, we believe that this is the result of a coordinated attack by our political opponents. The campaign has notified the US Attorney and the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney and the campaign will be filing a formal complaint reflecting our concerns. The campaign has also notified the State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review." "We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately. Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:34:52 -0800

And besides, Schumer has already suggested that he'll support Lieberman's run. He might have changed his mind if Lamont won with a bigger margin, but at 3%, no way. You were saying? Senators Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer announce full support for Lamont. They call Lieberman loss a "referendum on the president more than anything else.”

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 11:40:28 -0800

"Hacking" Update: FBI Doesn't Like Liars

"[FBI Field Agent David] Straretz noted that if Lieberman 'hacking' charges prove false, the FBI and federal prosecutors could pursue charges against those who reported them. 'If it was fabricated and you could prove intent, there's Title 18, Section 1001, which is providing false statements to an FBI agent. That can be prosecuted at the discretion of the U.S. Attorney's Office.'"

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:49:52 -0800

look how pathetic the White House has become--just a branch of the GOP now: ... The White House accused the Democratic Party on Wednesday of catering to the extreme left after Connecticut voters defeated Sen. Joe Lieberman in a primary election over his support of the Iraq war. ... we've become so accustomed to the idea that the White House is nothing but the headquarters for a political party - and not the seat of an executive branch that represents all Americans - that we don't even blink at attacks launched at the winner of a state-level opposition party primary. ...

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:04:57 -0800

and here we go: According to a close Lieberman adviser, the President's political guru, Karl Rove, has reached out to the Lieberman camp with a message straight from the Oval Office: "The boss wants to help. Whatever we can do, we will do." ...

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:35:45 -0800

The White House accused the Democratic Party on Wednesday of catering to the extreme left after Connecticut voters defeated Sen. Joe Lieberman in a primary election over his support of the Iraq war Well, not only is the 'extreme left' displeased about the war in Iraq -- a clear majority of all Americans feel the same way. Poll: 60 Percent of Americans Oppose Iraq War

"Sixty percent of Americans oppose the U.S. war in Iraq, the highest number since polling on the subject began with the commencement of the war in March 2003, according to poll results and trends released Wednesday. And a majority of poll respondents said they would support the withdrawal of at least some U.S. troops by the end of the year, according to results from the Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted last week on behalf of CNN. ....Sixty-one percent...said they believed at least some U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of the year. ....Asked about a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, 57 percent of poll respondents said they supported the setting of such a timetable..."

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:38:51 -0800

American Prospect: There's No Security In Incumbency -- Constituent Complaints About Lieberman A Bad Sign.

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:40:53 -0800

"For the rest of the country and the 2006 midterm elections, there are two major implications of Lamont's victory. First, supporters of the war in all but the most conservative districts and states had better take caution. The war provided the impetus for Lamont's challenge. But there is a second and far more mundane lesson: Taking one's constituents for granted is a dangerous business — incumbency's money and power are actually not a substitute for having a proper campaign assembled for re-election if and when a challenger comes after you." [American Prospect]

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:44:20 -0800

Revenge of the Irate Moderates

"The defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman at the hands of a little-known Connecticut businessman is bound to send a message to politicians of both parties that voters are angry and frustrated over the war in Iraq. The primary upset was not, however, a rebellion against the bipartisanship and centrism that Mr. Lieberman said he represented in the Senate. Instead, Connecticut Democrats were reacting to the way those concepts have been perverted by the Bush White House. Ned Lamont, a relative political novice, said he ran against Mr. Lieberman because he was offended by the senator’s sunny descriptions of what was happening in Iraq and his denunciation of Democrats who criticized the administration’s handling of the war. Many other people in Connecticut may have felt that sense of frustration, but no one else had the money and moxie to do what Mr. Lamont did. Mr. Lieberman was stunned to find himself on the defensive, and it was only in the last few weeks that the 18-year veteran mounted a desperate campaign to reclaim his party’s support. ....The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration’s contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home. Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person’s right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative. When Mr. Lieberman told The Washington Post, “I haven’t changed. Events around me have changed,” he actually put his finger on his political problem. His constituents felt that when the White House led the country into a disastrous international crisis and started subverting the nation’s basic traditions, Joe Lieberman should have changed enough to take a lead in fighting back." [New York Times | August 9, 2006]

By: ericb

ericb — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:49:28 -0800

The Other Message in Lieberman's Defeat

"...in two House primaries on Tuesday, Republican and Democratic incumbents also lost. Usually these upsets suggest the national mood is rising against incumbents, as well as against Congress itself. And well it should. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds Americans who approve of their own representative's performance is at the lowest level since 1994 - the last time control of the House switched parties. Usually, voters simply have a low opinion of Congress but then vote their senator or congressman back in. Incumbents have well rigged the electoral system to give them many advantages, from fundraising to gerrymandered districts. But now the percentage of voters disenchanted with their representatives has risen seven points, to 45 percent. Some of that increase could be related to a rising disgust with the way the Iraq war has been handled by both Congress and the Bush administration. But it may also arise from Congress allowing its powers as the first and most representative branch of government to be eroded by a wartime presidency and by a string of Supreme Court decisions. And voters are increasingly turned off by the extreme polarization of the win-at-any-cost politics that's developed over decades and ends up with both parties using national issues to score points rather than solve problems with a bipartisan spirit. The image of a gridlocked, dysfunctional Congress is very clear in the way lawmakers have failed to pass reforms that would solve the crises in immigration and energy, and that would translate into reality for voters. Impasses within the marbled halls of Capitol Hill that then lead to blame games - e.g., 'do-nothing Republicans' or 'obstructing Democrats' - may play well to the most partisan of voters, but not to the vast moderate voters who increasingly declare themselves as independent. And let's not even dwell on recent cases of blatant graft, a rise in pork-barrel profligacy using undebated earmarks, a decreasing number of days in session, and strange timing in House roll-call votes. Those in a supine Congress who would reform the institution itself - even if Democrats win a majority of seats in November - are still too few, but perhaps growing. The first override of a Bush veto came only last month, six years into his term. Senate oversight of Bush's wartime legal powers seems to be increasing. Too much can easily be read into Lieberman's primary defeat. But perhaps it really is the signal of a political shift toward institutional reform that would outlast the current national debates over the Iraq war or the Bush presidency." [Christian Science Monitor | August 9, 2006]

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 19:22:54 -0800

hysterical: Live blogging for Lieberman or how Bill Kristol saved my life (Jesus' General)

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 19:26:40 -0800

Exit Poll Results from CT: ... 61% of voters rejected the notion of Lieberman running as an Independent candidate in the fall, something he has promised to do. 39% supported it. Moreover, one in five Lieberman voters does not think he should seek an Independent run in November. ...

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 19:28:14 -0800

CNN is talking about the "rhetoric" of bloggers and Lieberman as i type--they show a screenshot of Kos, but then show Michaelmoore.com and only quote from him about Hillary--appalling.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 19:31:46 -0800

gsteff, it's plain to see that you're Lieberman-friendly, if not downright supportive of him. Pray tell, why? All I've ever seen and read about Lieberman indicates to me that he is about as slimey as a politician can get. What on earth causes you to rally at his side?

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 19:32:35 -0800

ooo--Wes Clark: ...You see, despite what Joe Lieberman believes, invading Iraq and diverting our attention away from Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is not being strong on national security. Blind allegiance to George W. Bush and his failed "stay the course" strategy is not being strong on national security. And no, Senator Lieberman, no matter how you demonize your opponents, there is no "antisecurity wing" of the Democratic Party. ...