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ooby writes "MSNBC reports that Bush and Kerry plan to shoot off a million or so emails to their closest friends. By using the Internet to distribute ads, presidential candidates believe they can reach more people using less money. I guess that's why they wrote that loophole in that awesome new spam law."
I gave to a Presidential campaign during the 2000 cycle. Over the next few months, I was deluged with snail mail and phone calls begging me for more money. I found it very frustrating and invasive. This year, I tried to give to a candidate's campaign through his website, but the process required me to provide an e-mail address that was verifiably mine. I did not complete the donation.
I will give to a Presidential campaign that I support when I can check a box that says, 'Do not spam or harass me.' (Or when I can provide darl@sco.com as my e-mail address) But not before then, I'm afraid.
My advice: vote for whomever you think is the best candidate, be it one of the main two or one of the no-shot independents.
That's not how democracy works. Democracy has ALWAYS been about trying to effect change through your vote. Voting for a fringe candidate doesn't effect anything.
For example, I personally think Bush should be voted out of office, and I'd rather vote for someone who has a chance of winning than trading my vote for a little personal satisfaction.
As a senator, John Kerry may have given his vote, and as President, George Bush signed it, but these two wrote it, not Bush or Kerry. The CAN-SPAM act may be pretty bad, but Bush and Kerry didn't put loopholes into it to help their campaigns. If you're going to put political jabs into news posts, please do a little research first. :)
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
Dean Campaign Says It Spammed
I have been pwned because my
Didn't get any spam from the Democrats...
Dean's support being eroded by the scream is a myth. He never really had all that much support. Remember the scream came AFTER losing the Iowa primary by quite a lot of votes. Dean made a lot of money early on, but pretty soon all the people who were going to donate money on the internet had donated already. His actual numbers were pretty low, in spite of media hype. Its not surprising, considering Dean has the opposite position of the average American on just about every political issue.
No, we're going to always have a 2 party system because we use "First past the post." The spoiler effect is too damned strong there. Third party candidates tend to help the party of the big two that it resembles least.
Although maybe if the Libertarians and the Greens could manage to take votes from the Democats and Republicans equally, third parties might be able to rise in power. (Although there are probably quite a few more Democratic-Libertarians than there are Republican-Greens.)
Now, if we used "Instant Runoff Voting" or "Approval Voting," this problem wouldn't be as big a deal.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Yes, it's so much better to use Instant Runoff, because then I can vote for a candidate to cause them to lose, where if I didn't vote, they would win. Instant Runoff always seems to have the most mindshare of the alternative voting systems, and it is also the only system seriously being looked at that works worse than our current system. Condorcet is a much better system, and Approval is a close second with the advantage of simplicity. IRV is dead last. Check out http://www.electionmethods.org/ for more information.
There are some exceptions. A lot of people know the factoid about Jackie Kennedy having free use of the USPS for the remainder of her life, but few realize that all first ladies have that privilege. So do all former Presidents. There are restrictions here too; oddly enough, the franking privilege for ex-Presidents and ex-First Ladies is only good for personal mail. Go figure, they have to pay for their personal postage while they're in power, but they get it free forever after that!
You can see some of the regulations in the USPS Domestic Mail Manual, S E050. The 60 day rule regarding elections and franked mailings is not mentioned here but I'm certain of it.
Full disclosure: I spent 5 years working for a commercial mail receiving agency (CMRA) and I mostly knew the DMM inside and out. That was 5 years ago, and things have certainly changed, but I was able to find the franked mail guidelines easily enough in the current DMM.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
It's possible to vote for a write-in candidate with a touch-screen machine. I recently voted in the Democratic Presidential Primary in Virginia and there was an option on the machine to type in the name of a write-in candidate.
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Does anyone know the IPs/netblocks of the mail servers that'll be used to send this junk so I can add them to the blocklist? Also, anyone got a set of IPs/netblocks which will be linked in the bodies of the spam? I'll add them to our spamassassin bigevil.cf list and squid block list.
Thanks.
Like all spam, just block it and filter it and block access to all the linked sites. Makes you wonder why these &!@*# !@&*#@ spammers keep sending this muck.
He wasn't campaigning in Iowa, officially. he had gone the Clinton route and not campaigned in Iowa.
The assumption then, as now, was that the farmer and union votes would determine Iowa and it was fairly likely Gephardt would win there.
Kerry's showing in Iowa was the only surprise.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.