Dee Dee Dee

I guess Dan Gerstein isn't the only idiot in a Republican campaign

The Sockpuppet Has No Sock
by: jmelli
Wed Sep 20, 2006 at 21:39:19 PM EDT

Star Ledger:

Blogger claims Kean campaign is behind anonymous postings
The founder of the liberal political blog Blue Jersey says he’s figured out where some anonymous postings critical of Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez came from — the campaign of Republican candidate Tom Kean Jr.

"Nonsense," said Kean campaign press secretary, Jill Hazelbaker.

Hazelbaker denied the campaign had anything to do with the postings. “Oh, please,” she said. “I’m very busy. I don’t have time to focus on Blue Jersey. ... I don’t blog.”

But Juan Melli, a graduate student at Princeton University who created Blue Jersey (www.bluejersey.net) last year, said today the Internet Protocol address on postings from “cleanupnj” and “usedtobeblue” match Hazelbaker’s.

Besides using a false identity, Melli claimed, the poster pretended to be an “ardent Democrat” while shilling for Kean. “She lied,” he said. “This is a campaign tactic that’s not part of the honest debate.”

Hazelbaker argued that the address Melli said was on the postings is not the campaign’s IP address.

But it is the same IP address that appears on numerous official campaign e-mails sent by Hazelbaker to The Star-Ledger through the course of the campaign.

Hazelbaker said tonight she could not explain why that IP address shows up on her e-mail, but that the campaign’s technical staff assured her Melli had it wrong.

“It’s nonsense. That’s my comment,” Hazelbaker said. “We’re talking about a left-leaning blog whose candidate is imploding. I don’t blog and it wasn’t me. Period.”

I'm sure this was just another one of their many "coincidences".

She's obviously lying and worse, lying to the media. They will soon come to distrust every word from her mouth. One guy has already managed to get into the New York/New Jersey media with this and it will quickly come to define the Kean campaign. First, they commissioned a documentary accussing Menendez of being a crook, despite what prosecutors say. Now, when clearly busted, and the IP number is a public record with a public document which ties back to the owner, she's lying to the same people covering her campaign.

Even worse, the Times and Star Ledger reporters checked the IP of their Kean e-mails and got a bingo. It's fairly easy to check if you know how, and their techies knew how.

Then she called the blogger, Juan Melli, a liar. Yeah, a Princeton grad student has time to lie on Tom Kean.

I covered Bob Menendez back in the day, and knew he would be a Senator. Not because he was dashing or handsome or even a politicial genius. But because he was the only honest man in a room full of crooks. North Jersey politics is sleazy as hell, but Menendez isn't. Think Sopranos without the killing.

Kean Jr. is an empty suit. The US Attorney tried to say Menendez ran some scam on a house a non-profit is using, but that was covered at the time, 1996. His daddy isn't going to get him a Senate seat this year.