Scott Garrett has been an excellent representative of the people in North Jersey and will win a fourth term. Why hasnt Dennis Shulman talked about his Israeli policy? Oh, thats right, because more members of the jewish community know that Rep. Garrett is the only candidate in the race that represents the jewish community. Its unfortunate that Shulman represents the far left fringes of his party and not the religion he is supposed to be a leader of.

I just read on the wire that Colin Powell endorsed Maurice Chulman for the Congressional seat in District 5. He said that he will be ready on day one next December.

it was a pretty stupid mailer. After spending months working to distance himself from the simple-minded jingoistic failures of the past few years: taking "re-elect" off his lawn signs, "an independent voice", and so on...

way to sink back into the muck of the past and blow the progress that he's made.

I know Garrett will continue to make a better Congressman than Shulman ever could make - but stunts like these make it hard to convince others of that same basic fact.

Folks, I haven't seen this mailer......but Matt Friedman doesn't contradict the following description....

>>>...a mailer from incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-Wantage) that put a small picture of Shulman, a rabbi, in front of a much larger picture of a Hamas member carrying an AK-47.

"Should we be talking with terrorists," it reads in large, blood red letters.  "Dennis Shulman thinks so."<<<<<

That is so effing low that Sott Garrett deserves to be turned out of office on that one single affront to all that is good and decent.  

It's so ironic that Garrett portrays himself as a "pro-lifer".   If that were true he would have to be a man of great compassion and humane sensitivity; the facts reveal the reality that Scott Garrett is a coarse malicious malevolent slick talking con man who is willing to lie and cheat to win at any cost.

How dare hypocrite Scott Garrett put out such an ugly vicious misleading piece of crap like that?

Does Scott Garrett really believe that RABBI Dennis Shulman is somehow in league with, or sympathetic to, Hamas???  That's what the message of that mailer is.

Is Garrett a lying evil Rovian scumbag?

Or is he merely a delusional asshole?

Either way he has, with this one perfidious action, disqualified himself from being worthy of even one single vote from anyone in the fifth CD, let alone being returned to the United Sates Congress!!!

From Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle there is no progress......Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

if he thinks his right wing smear campaign will have any effect whatsoever other than to attract people to Shulman, he is kidding himself.

and I'll be voting for Shulman. That being said for Hauser to put out a press release saying that Garrett has no right to attack him crosses a fundamental line. The BOTH of these campaigns have focused themselves around attacks, I have yet to see ONE positive add about issues from either one and it is absolutely disgusting. Electing a Congressman should be about who can better serve your district...not which candidate is the worst, neither of these campaigns seem to get that.

As for Garrett being a good representative that is absolutely untrue. If by good you mean "does nothing for his district and only knows how to vote NO regardless of the bill" that would be a fair representation. The guy voted against renewing the voting rights act for gods sake! Where is the justification in that, if someone could tell me I would love to hear it. I'm not saying Dennis would be a good Congressman but honestly any free thinking person would do a more competent job in office then Garrett. I challenge you to point to ONE positive thing that Garrett has done for our district as a whole.

For Garrett to link Dennis to terrorism is dispicable. Like i said in the previous post I have a serious problem with the amount of attacks being exchanged between these two campaigns, however thats a part of American politics today and we have to accept it. That being said this is just wrong, talk about totally swiftboating Shulman, this isn't right in any circumstance. Accusing a RABBI being out of touch with Israel is just sick and perverted and has become a staple of Mr. Garrett's campaign. This is why we have attack politics and this is why these two campaigns are at each others throats, Republicans put winning elections above human decency and this is why we see so much negative campaigning. A democratic candidate cant just sit by and let himself be slandered like this and although I'm against this whole mantra of campaigning I would hit Garrett hard on being racist and who votes against anything that matters to real middle class people.

.....immediately apologize for that mailer and fire anyone on his staff who was responsible for putting it out.

And if he actually did pass on it himself; he should resign from Congress and drop out of this race in abject shame.

Of course, the premise there was that Garrett had any sense of decency. Clearly Scott Garrett, like his "Faustian Friends" Karl Rove and John McCain have no capacity for shame.

I ask you Scott Garrett, What profit is there in "winning" a Congressional seat and losing your own soul???

From Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle there is no progress......Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

I haven't seen the Garrett piece yet so I cannot comment on what it says or doesn't say outside of what Friedman reports.

However, I can tell you with certainly that Shulman went truly negative in this race in September.  If folks are going to start with the finger pointing on "who did what, when" at least get that part straight.  Go to Shulman's page if you don't believe me, look at the date-stamps, and see how negative he's been.

As for the comment itself, you can't claim that Garrett is being mean spirited or deceitful in the piece.  In last week's debate, it was cited that Shulman made comments attributed to this stance when he spoke with the Forward, an online Jewish weekly newspaper.  Shulman tried to play it off like the Forward had misquoted him or took his comments out of context, but it was plainly reported in September 2007. 

After over a year of circulation on the web, if his campaign had a problem with it, they should have asked for a retraction.

Regardless, this played up "outrage" by Shulman and his camp is just semantics.  The article plainly says, "Regarding foreign policy, Shulman said, the United States should maintain a strong alliance with Israel and reinvigorate diplomatic efforts to engage such adversaries as Hamas and the Iranian regime."

I don't know about you, but even the most basic interpretation says that means talking to an Iranian regime who's president stated that "Israel is nothing but a stinking corpse" earlier this year, has denied the Holocaust ever happend, and wants to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.

And if that wasn't enough, he wants to "reinvigorate efforts" with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has been funded by Iran?

Its really troubling to me that he would think that "reinvigorating dipolmatic efforts" with such a nation would lead to any progress after past genuine efforts by the U.S. and Europe have been quickly betrayed.

I know that other folks keep saying things like "This is a ridiculous attack, he's a Rabbi" - but it is immaterial.  Shulman may be the greatest Rabbi ever, but Rabbi or not, its foolish to think that Israel is the ONLY target of terrorist groups and regimes bent to assist those organizations.  And it is equally naive to think that, just as it is implied in the example cited by the Forward, Iran would negotiate honestly when they are underhandedly funding a sworn enemy of Israel.

Negotiating or talking in good faith when the other side has an alterior motive NEVER works out well.  It didn't when Clinton sat down with Arafat nor did it work when Albright sat down with Kim Jong-il.

I truly believe that Shulman wants to protect Israel at all costs. I also believes he wants to thwart the enemies of the United Staets.  I don't question his patriotism.  

But this entire episode isn't about negative attacks, saying that Shulman "supports terrorists" or is "sympathetic" to terrorists.

Its about saying that he doesn't have the proper judgement to make these calls if he doesn't look at the entire playing field before taking such a stance.  It speaks to a lack of understanding about world events and a lack experience.

Veritas vos Liberabit
"Collecting more taxes than absolutely necessary is legalized robbery" - Calvin Coolidge

I will give you credit, however, for putting the best spin possible on what Garrett is doing.

What you point out is the legalistic technical cover story/justification for, essentially, appealing to a gut level response that portrays Shulman as a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer.

This is how propaganda works. Goebbles and Rove are turds of a feather in this regard and now Garrett has jumped on the bandwagon.

Garrett feels threatened by the polls showing that Shulman is closing and he's desperate.

Just take a look at this Garrett piece of shit video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a1GsGv5Dlo

Clearly Garrett knows that he himself is totally and legitimately vulnerable to the charge of being an extremist....because he actually IS an extremist.

So what does he do? He charges his opponent with being exactly what he himself actually IS!!!

Then Garrett sits and hopes that the electorate will become so confused and disgusted that they stay at home or just say, "a pox on both your houses".

This is the Garrett M.O.

As for the actual policy differences; Shulman is just as much a supporter of Israel as anyone else, if not more so....the idea of actually trying to talk to your enemies is not a radical concept! LOL

There is no military "final solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hell, it could be argued that Scott Garrett's brand of extreme fundamentalism is actually motivating him to do and say things that make a nuclear apocalyptic exchange in the middle east MORE likely.

Garrett's fundamentalist beliefs say that a Armageddon is just one more positive step to the second coming of Christ and the "Rapture" in which Scottie and all his Klan get to go straight to heaven.

I have yet to hear Garrett separate himself from the fanatical extremist right wing movement that calls itself Dominionism. Why hasn't he done that????

Shulman is a mild mannered centrist in the Marge Roukema mold. He's no extremist....and for Garrett to make that case is pure non-sense.

From Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle there is no progress......Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Nick, with all due respect buddy, I'm not giving any kind of "legalistic technical cover story/justification" for calling Shulman anyhing. I'm telling you what was stated directly from the aricle and what I take from it as an outside observer (I don't live in the district, but this stuff is all very interesting to me).

What's more, the ad doesn't say Shulman is "a terrorist/terrorist sympathizer" in the YouTube video you linked to. It says that he is an "extremist that would negotiate with terrorists" - which is how many people would interpret a statement that says he wants to "reinvigorate diplomatic efforts to engage such adversaries as Hamas".

No matter how you cut and slice it, stepping up diplomatic efforts with a terror group like Hamas IS an extremist view to the average guy or gal.

All the rest of it tries to distract from the bottom line: Does he have the necessary judgement when you make such claims?

Like I said earlier, I don't think that Shulman is a bad guy or supports terror. I'm sure he's a very fine man and gifted psychologist-psychoanalyst (which he tends to say quite a bit by the way). But when you read such comments as was written in the Forward, that is troubling. He could have all the good intentions in the world, but stating you want to engage adversaries like Hamas though diplomacy illustrates a lack of understanding and poor judgement of what's going on in the world.

You are right, there is no military final solution in Israel and the idea of "trying to talk to your enemies is not a radical concept" is valid under the right conditions.  In the end, it will take statesmen and good will to cement any lasting peace.  But how do you talk to an enemy that wants to destroy Israel (and the US for supporting Israel), hates everything about western civilization, and will not denounce those aims even as they sit down across the table from you?

If it was as simple as "let's just talk" then the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and the issues associated with it throughout the wider Middle East) would have been solved during the Carter years. And the issue of North Korea seeking nuclear weapons would have been taken care of when Albright sat down with Jung-il in the Clinton years.

But neither happend since there has been incredible duplicity in these exchanges. Ultimately, it comes to trust -- How do you put your faith in groups who have proven to be untrustworthy in the past? Is that not the an extremist stance to take considering the last 30 years of failed back n' forth talks under both parties? If you take it under its entirety, its somewhat logical to think that this isn't because we haven't bent over backwards to be accomodating (we have); its becasue the other side often uses our genuine attempts to talks as tools of propoganda and aggrandizement.

As for the rest of it, I don't know anything about "Dominionism" or pretend to know Garrett's Modus Operandi, his "desperation" or what the Klan has to do with the "Rapture" etc, so I can't speak intelligently on it. But if it makes you feel better to say it, go ahead I guess.

Okay, that's all from me...I have to go back to work now! LOL

Take care Nick.

Veritas vos Liberabit
"Collecting more taxes than absolutely necessary is legalized robbery." - Calvin Coolidge