The more I think about the fact that either the Healey campaign or someone in sympathy with it (I don’t personally care which it is) dragged Deval Patrick’s family into this race, the angrier I get.
But rather than get mad, I say let’s get even. And so I propose that we use this moment to show Kerry Healey — and Deval Patrick — that we won’t stand for gutter politics.
So in addition to showing up on Sunday, give money to the Patrick/Murray Victory Fund. I don’t care how much, and I don’t care if you’ve already given (as I understand it, the max you can give to the Victory Fund is $6,000, which includes $500 to DP, $500 to TM, and $5,000 to the party — you just give, and they sort out where it should go). Give again.
And to encourage you do to it, here’s a challenge: I will personally match the first $500 donated to Patrick/Murray via the BMG donations page (or via the box in the upper right hand corner of BMG’s front page, which does the same thing) in the next 24 hours. I’ll check back this time tomorrow, see how far we’ve come, and send in my donation.
Come on, people. Stand up for what you believe.
Hey David, If a big donor out there has $500 to match you then one of you should get go to the James Taylor concert!
I have an idea! For everyone who contributes (or claims to contribute) $50 or more, I’ll send you a copy of the DVD showing James Taylor and Yo-Yo Ma singing “Happy Birthday” to Deval in Lenox on his 50th birthday.
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Just send in the bucks and send me your postal address to mfw at mfw dot us.
It must be a collector’s edition at that price. I’ll have one please. My wife and I should have gone to that party. We’ve been sorry we missed it ever since. BTW, I’m still waiting for The Three BMG’s rendition of “Proud”.
David,
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Angry motivates people; fear de-mobilizes them and shuts them down. The more angry people are that Healey is dragging in the base, fear mongering elements into the campaign the better. We should be angry that she’s trying to co-opt the debate from real issues of improving people’s lives and aspiring to a better future. Deval is absolutely correct to name this as “creating fear”; and in comparision is vision toward hope shines through.
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So GET ANGRY and make sure others are. That’s how hope will win this election
I couldn’t agree more.I think this leak incident could mark the beginning of a big backlash against this relentless onslaught of mindless negative ads.
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I think if Deval can use this to contrast his positive, forward thinking and outlook with that of KH’s dark, nasty, negative demeanor, I think we’ll have that post primary momentum back in no time..
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I feel much better than I did just this morning when I first started posting.
It was a the taped Healy campaign scare calls to my house that motivated me to actively volunteer for Patrick. My wife unenrolled so we get scare tactic and push poll calls at home a lot.
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It is a threatening tactic and I don’t like being threatened.
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Phone bank today. Rally tomorrow.
It was a the taped Healy campaign scare calls to my house that motivated me to actively volunteer for Patrick. My wife unenrolled so we get scare tactic and push poll calls at home a lot.
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It is a threatening tactic and I don’t like being threatened.
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Phone bank today. Rally tomorrow.
Have you ever despaired about having to vote for the lesser of two evils instead of enthusiastically supporting someone? Have you ever heard yourself say, “why don’t good people run for office?” Well, people, THIS is why a lot of good people don’t want to run for office. Who wants to put not only themselves but their families through this kind of garbage?
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I’m getting angry AND getting even.
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A few more dollars for the Patrick/Murray Victory Fund, and I’ll be there on Sunday.
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I am SICK of this kind of politics. I want a change. We’ve got a chance to make ourselves heard. The only way this is ever going to stop is if it no longer works.
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DON’T LET IT WORK.
I just forwarded the rally invitation to everyone appropriate in my address book, urging them to join me in showing up to send a message.
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…but definitely worth the $500. Thanks for the call to action.
Healey has nothin.’ Nothin’ to campaign on, nothing to offer, and moreover, she knows it.
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Which is why she’s stooping to gutter politics, while pretending that her expensively manicured patrician hands aren’t awash in raw sewage. Big surprise.
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And when Patrick, who has run a completely positive campaign, condemns these tactics out of entirely justifiable anger, she then accuses him of negative campaigning! Irony is officially dead.
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Fortunately, Patrick supporters are even now channelling their anger into action. Healey the Hypocrite is going to regret this in a BIG way. The way she’s campaigned to date, she’s in a position to demand nothing of Patrick. And she’s going to wake up to a big surprise Election Day, when she heads toward a well-deserved obscurity living off her hubby’s ill-gotten bucks, shopping at Talbots, and going to Junior League meetings so she can whine to her elite friends how those awful Massachusetts Democrats just don’t want decent people leading them.
Sorry my friends, but I can no longer support a candidate who isnt honest with me… It saddens me, as a former Deval devotee to say this, But, I will be supporting either Grace Ross or Mihos…
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Deval Patrick has a right to voice his dissatisfaction with the Herald if he believes he is being treated unfairly. He does not have the right to blame the lieutenant governor for the Herald Article without any facts that she had something to do with the article…
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This and his unconvincing notion that he “forgot” he had given money to LaGuer, and his claims of only writing him once, 15 years ago, when it was far less than 15 years ago, and far more frequent then he led me to believe…
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I am SICK and TIRED of public servants, thinking I am too dumb to see past there spin and lies…
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Bush lied to get us into Iraq, Clinton lied about his involvement with Lewinsky, and I am sick of lies…
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He did not blame Healey for leaking this info. That’s what the media is stupidly parroting, but it’s not so. The statement does say that this is part of her brand of politics. That’s fair.
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Welcome to BMG, by the way. First time here?
Let’s see, who had the means to gather this information and the motive to shop it around to the press?
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Grace Ross?
Christy Mihos?
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I mean, if a member of Deval’s family worked for Bechtel, you might suspect Mihos. Grow up. This is another in the daily crime/scare story by the Healey campaign.
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HOT NEWS: Tim Murray defends sex offenders? REAL STORY: He’s a court appointed attorney and these cases were assigned to him.
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HOT NEWS: Deval is successful in getting the death penalty overturned? And now the cop killer is eligible for parole? REAL STORY: He isn’t eligible for parole until 2098!
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What’s next? You will want us to believe that Deval sent you to troll in BMG?
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Nah. Kerry Muffy Healey is such a nice, accomplished, positive leader. She wouldn’t think of having her people shop around that muck.
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Hmmm….that’s like saying I’ll be supporting either Bush or Kerry.
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Grace Ross and Christy Mihos are polar opposites in ideology, politics, and approach. Doesn’t it matter to you what positions your candidates actually take on the issues?
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Sorry, I don’t buy it.
Her opposition team was behind it. None of them will likely have been paid by her campaign, but I assure you this isn’t just one big coincidence.
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You have no idea what level politicos will stoop to in engaging in nasty politics. Deval Patrick has resisted going negative this entire campaign – if I only knew that about him, it would be enough to vote for the guy.
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Actions speak louder than words.
if the oppo team is paid for by some wealthy Republican, or the RNC, then she (and the Globe and Herald) can pretend she’s not behind it.
Forget the “Muffy” moniker. She is every bit as twisted and ethically bankrupt as Rove.
I would completely recommend a trip to Svetvanaland.
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There, you would find true excelsior company.
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I would think you would at least have expressed some horror at the fact that someone chose to use a very private story about Deval Patrick’s sister and brother-in-law for political purposes, no matter who released the story to the press. I also think you would at least espress some horror at Kerry Healey’s campaign manager’s total lack of disgust with the publication of the Herald story and his use of it, instead, as another way to attack Deval Patrick. (I told the story to a Republican friend in Washington, D.C., and she even found the publication of the Herald story disgusting.)
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You said it yourself
Well obviously the spin and lies of the Healeyites worked with you. But then, maybe you are not really a former Deval Patrick devotee…
Ugliness breads ugliness. The thought of seeing that constipated horse face for four years is enought to make me donate AGAIN to DP AND “come to Boston” on Sunday. I’ll be holding DP/TM signs in my town center Sat. from 10 to 12. Republicans: America’s White Supremacist Party, they have no shame and NEVER will!
Do the contributions submitted through the contribute button on the homepage get added to the BMG total or do you need to click on the “See how we are doing” link and contribute from there?
either way, it shows up on the BMG tally sheet. Thanks for asking!
This whole story is utterly remarkable. The shallow, biased reportorial judgment of the Boston Herald continues to amaze me. There are clearly two villains here: the Boston Herald and the Healey campaign. The Herald has, of course, long been a fatuous, lazy and reflexively reationary paper, but this is the worst judgment I’ve seen in years. In writing a story like this, the Herald’s Dave Wedge once again shows the same solid judgment that resulted in one of the largest libel lawsuit awards in the history of the Common wealth. What the hell was he thinking? What relevance does this story have to anything in this campaign? There are at least two critical reasons why the Herald should have passed on this story.
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p> First, Deval’s brother in law, who is still married to his wife, appears almost entirely to have turned his life around through force of will, dedication and religious devotion. It is not the job of the Herald to update Nathaniel Hawthorne for the 21st century by branding the brother-in-law with an ineluctable stain of a distant crime. Mr. Sigh’s story is exactly the kind of non-recidivist episode that should fill everyone with hope about the power and prospect of personal turnaround. Assuredly, any criminologist worth his or her salt would celebrate this story as a success par excellence — any criminologist not running for Governor anyway….
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p> Second, in a city and region that has experienced enormous and violent racial turmoil for much of the last half-century, the Herald really should know better than to publish a story that potentially feeds into the crudest stereotypes about rapacious African-American men committing crimes. The Herald should have done what a court of law in this instance would have done, which would have been to weigh the relevance of the story against its prejudical effect. Here, there is zero relevance, and far-reaching prejudicial effect. Any lucid, knowledgeable judge in America would have kept this story out of a trial in his or her courtroom, yet the Herald plunged full speed ahead. There is no way that the Herald can provide a satisfactory explanation of the relevance of this story to the Governor’s race, yet the paper will no doubt try. The Herald may try to argue that this is an issue of public concern, and that journalistic ethics dictate that the paper report on the story. If this is, indeed, an issue of public concern, then I suggest the following to the Boston Herald: why don’t you publish reports on all the other men and women in the Commonwealth who have committed a sex crime and failed to register with the SORB? If this is an issue of public concern in this case, then assuredly it’s an issue of public concern in all they cases featuring people who do not have a brother-in law running for Governor.
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p> As to Healey, she may turn out to be right that no firm evidence will link her campaign or its surrogates to this story. There is strong circumstantial evidence, however, that she or her agents were involved. First, this story fits snugly in the progession of increasingly bilious advertisements she has so far been troweling out via her husband’s largesse. Further, who has a better motive to besmirch Patrick than Healey? In closing, Healey reminds me of famous quotation of Benjamin Disraeli to a despised colleague: ‘Honourable Sir, it’s true that I am a low, mean snake. But you, sir, could walk beneath me wearing a top hat.’
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Muffy is playing the Willie Horton card. Only worse, because Horton wasn’t related to Mike Dukakis by marriage, and Horton hadn’t turned his life around.
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And yes, Gary, I meant every word I said upthread. You may object to the image of Muffy Healey with her arms up to the elbows in sewage, but that’s exactly how she’s running her campaign, while turning that patrician nose up so she can pretend it don’t stink.
I watched a few of the networks tonight, looking to see how this would be covered. On the Jim Braude show, NECN, hosted tonight by Chet Curtis, almost the entire statement was played. Channel 7 at 11 played several long statements. The coverage on Channel 4 was good also.
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Even when Kerry Healey was denying that she was associated with the story, she got her gutless little digs in, bleating ever more that DP would be soft on crime.
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I think this is a turning point also. Kerry is battling her own very high negatives; they just went up. The stench of this odium surrounds her. The ghost of Lee Atwater and the smirking visage of Karl Rove surround her as well. We don’t need an expert to connect the dots on this one.
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See you all on Sunday!
that I just wrote and mailed a check to Patrick/Murray this afternoon. I was really feeling totally tapped out, but it’s amazing, the galvanizing power of a little righteous fury. I’m been following and supporting Deval’s campaign for close to a year now and I’ll be damned if Healey and her gang get away with crap like this. It’s always been an uphill battle. I knew we were going to be outspent. But I didn’t imagine that I’d be so disgusted by the tactics of a woman who wants to govern my state. I could’ve lived with losing in a fair contest, but this is politics at its very worst.
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Healey should be ashamed. Her people should be ashamed. Because honestly, I can’t imagine in a million years that in her place, Patrick would’ve done the same thing.
You arrogant liberal bastards are so lost in yourselves that you can’t see your forest from your trees. Your elitist moralisms fall on dead ears. Do you have any idea what state you are you in? You have any idea how ugly and debased you and yourselves have made things? Sucks that things fall back on you doesn’t it?
When you said “dead” ears, did you, by chance, mean “deaf” ears? Although I may be an arrogant liberal, at least I know my cliches, you clown….
I miss a few letters typing, after a few drinks.
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You arrogant SOB. Have a nice night.
Just like Mark Foley, it’s the fault of the booze, huh?
Which he did. And so should all MA Repub Congressional peeps.
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That ok with you?
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Wheee!!! It’s so much fun to moon the adults now isn’t it?!?!?!
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By the way… What are you talking about???
and that you really might not be so full of hate…
If it was a Healey flack shopping this story around town, given how strident their denials, I think it’s only a matter of time before it comes out that it DID come from them. Then, all their strident denials and denunciations and demands for apologies in this first news cycle will just be more rope to use to hang them and to ensure that Patrick wins in November by a double digit margin.
I doubt that anyone will be able to link the Healey campaign to the recent smear. The Rethug/conservative movement is like a cult. They take a blood oath to protect themselves. Just like the stolen election in Ohio has remained a secret. Hopefully some day all of them will start squealing like pigs.
There are many Republicans who are equally disgusted by this stuff (I know a few). Some are tied into the network. As in the Dem party, it’s very hard to keep secrets and gossip abounds. This will be the talk of the Republican party, and someone in that party just might let us know who the lowlife is and what connection there is to the Healey campaign. Remember, Deval is supported by a number of high profile Republicans. There are moderate Republicans who want to regain control of their party who cringe at this sort of garbage in politics.
I don’t think Deval can prove it was Healey, but he can make sure everyone knows it was SOMEONE outside the Herald who fed them the story. The Globe isn’t making a big deal of this, but they did report today that they got an anonymous letter on the subject last week. Given Healey’s unfavorable numbers, I think if we do a good job of getting the dots out there, people can connect them themselves.
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Part of that campaign will hopefully be just what you suggest: hammer away at her dishonesty where is it undisputable, to win the credibility war.
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If Patrick is merely saying what many people are thinking… re-inforcing whatever doubts they have, then he loses nothing and, in fact, gains big.
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I think that is immateriel. I suspect merely ignorance of the law (the crime was some decades in the past). I can’t see how Deval loses anybodies vote over this…
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Who leaked the information is unimportant. Political campaigns are networks of formal and informal operatives. Healy and O’Brien chose to terrorize voters with smear and fear. This what happens. She reaps what she sows.
After my hubby proofread my post about Muffy, Biff and their Vermont tax break, he immediately agreed to kick in a $50 contribution. We wish we could do more financially — but we’re facing property tax bills of $4,000 a year on a house valued at $265,000, and no breaks from the Commonwealth on the interest for our graduate school loans.
I didn’t intend to give any more, but this behavior so clearly shows what we can expect from Republican leadership. I’m disgusted.
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See you on Sunday, too.
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After this hatchet job from the Herald that tattled about, not Deval but some ancient dirty laundry of his family, I wish somebody would make some obvious conclusions more widely known to our Massachusetts MSM, for whom nothing appears to be obvious.
1. Healy may be able to disclaim personal responsibility for this shameful lowering of the civility and relevance of the negative campaigning but she can only do so if she can shed her supporters: the vicious goons at the Herald. They reflect on her character more than something Deval’s brother did decades ago reflects on him.
2. So now we know something about the deprived family circumstances of Deval’s upbringing that we probably didn’t want to know…about anybody’s family. So what? All that it tells us about the candidate is just how far he has come and how much he has overcome to get where he is now. Can Healy point to any such obstacles in her career? Deval would appear to be made of grittier and more optimistic stuff than the relatively priveleged Ms Healy.
3. The attack ads [that do have Healy’s name on them] that equate Deval with a cop killer are carefully ommiting the fact that as the convicted man’s attorney, Patrick was doing the job he was obligated to do. In what capacity has Healy so effectively discharged her obligations?
condemned the story that dragged Patrick’s family into the race this way? Has the lt. governor condemned those kind of mud-slinging tactics and said that if it was a supporter of hers, she condemns their actions and asks people not to attack her opponent’s families?
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I’m seriously asking, because if she has, I’ve missed it. And if she hasn’t, how can she be upset over intimations that her campaign was involved and yet not criticize whoever it was who sent the anonymous letter?
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This is what feels so wrong to me about her indignation, that she can be angry at hints her supporters were involved yet not come out forcefully against the action itself.
And that’s part of what’s so pathetic about her response. I’ve heard her say that she doesn’t plan to “use” this in her campaign, but she has not condemned the dime-drop, as far as I know.
The buzz/wild speculation in certain radical right circles (meaning comments to blog posts) is that Deval leaked the story himself to cause backlash against Kerry Healey. Outrageous.
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Nov 7th can’t get here soon enough.
Tinfoil hats are everywhere.
Although a modest donation, who knows what the real cost is, being that it came from my student loan money that will take me 30 years to pay off after I finish school.
I’ve given 20.00 twice over the campaign and it wasn’t very easy. My time comes at a much lesser expense than my money.
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So, thank you…! And if you aren’t already, come to the rally tomorrow and give a little of your time to volunteer!