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Candidate Ads, Coming Soon To An Inbox Near You
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."
They will certanly not get my vote!!
Email them all back. See how they like it.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Early on in the Democratic nominee race Howard Dean did exactly this same type of constituent spamming.
Now he's just about out of the race, despite his being the front-runner for so long.
Spam doesn't get you nowhere, idiots.
YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!111!!1!
I have been pwned because my
I've gotten 3 or so phone calls from *#$#$ Kerry supporters. When the last one started off on all the great things Kerry was going to do, I basically said "That's exactly why I'm not voting for him. Thanks for calling!"
Of course, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed if his platform didn't amount to nothing more than "I'm not Bush!" As a Senator, he's voted in favor of just about everything that Slashdotters despise. Why do you people like this guy?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm not too impressed with anybody in the race, but if I'm getting spam from them - there's no way in hell I'd vote for them.
Their spam will be sent back. Their "voter feedback" form will be used to explain why I would never buy a product advertised by spam - including the President.
So are they going to make my bandwidth tax-deductable?
It's just like the "do no call" list. Laws which prohibit political speech will not hold up in court.
This is the election where we can make a difference. Let's not see a repeat of 2000.
I love our country probably almost as much as you do. Let's not let special interests dominate this campaign.
I want to see the candidates as they truly are. Nothing can do that as well as personal emails from them.
. . . is this: Where are they obtaining the email addresses for these mass mailings? The article states that they have "millions" of addresses. I find it hard to believe that millions of people have opted in to receive political email. I wonder if they political parties are instead using the same kinds of purchased email databases used by other large-scale spammers.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I don't think it will take long for worms/viruses to take advantage of this, either. "Attached is a special message from John Kerry!"
G
How can this post be 'Insightful'?
As far as I know e-mail may seem to have a negligible cost but is that really true?
In order to recieve e-mail I need access to a computer (and a server) which in it self is as env. unfriendly as paper and felling trees. Both use electricity and a large infrastructure to work. (Network + servers etc.)
Yes you can send lots of emails and the cost would be almost linear, but the medium seems to also foster a low quality of mass communication.
Everybody thinks Kerry is going to get the nomination and that's why he probably will. Not saying he's any better or worse than any of the other guys, but he's played his media cards well.
If that means sandbagging Dean with that stupid cheer sequence in Iowa, courtesy of Kerry's media connections, then yeah, you're right.
If you hear the original tape you can't even hear Dean.
I had a feeling an attempt like this would be made by the Democrat Old Guard. I'm surprised that it worked, is all. I once again underestimated the stupidity of the general public.
I'm not a Dean supporter at all, i'm a Republican, but this is disturbing nonetheless. Dean had some serious support that completely eroded away due to a single sound bite.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Disturbing as this is, a friend that has a blog has been getting referrer spam to candidates' webpages of all things.
If you're unfamiliar with the term, referrer spamming is when fake HTTP Referrer headers are used to make referrers show up in webserver logs so the webmasters think they are linked to by that site.
He was getting only porn spamming up until about a month ago, when the presidental candidate pages started showing up.
We've already seen this set of loopholes exploited by the Bush team who e-mailed out an anti-Kerry video that doesn't contain the "I approve..." video from Bush that would be required if it was placed as a TV ad. Not too many people saw the e-mailed ad, but the major news organizations did and the cable networks all felt obligated to run the 30 second a few times amid several segments that discussed it.
Howard Dean's campaign committee has also had online Flash ads which don't have the "I approve" bit. It certainly isn't against the rules. Bush's ad was newsworthy because it shows that he's opening up the campaign against Kerry already.
I personally find the required "I approve" testimony to be obnoxious, but it actually does seem to be fairly effective in making the candidates watch what they say. Of course, the ads from folks like Moveon.org, the NRA, etc. will not be affected by this requirement.
Our presidential election system is oligarchy. Congressional elections are not quite so bad, but close. The sad truth is, most people do not realize that there are more parties -- the republicans and democrats have dominated politics for so long that people assume they are the only ones out there. Yes, people realize there are other ones, but usually just parties like the green party that are viewed as a bunch of hippies who don't bathe. They are not to be taken seriously.
I'd like to have a "none of the above" option, abolishment of the electoral college, and multiple votes -- vote for all the guys you like, none of the ones you dislike. Whoever has the most votes gets elected. And change the ballot rules to make it easier for third parties to get on all the states' ballots.
The problem is, these changes would dimish the two-party stranglehold on elected offices, and they are the same people who would have to approve it (most likely as an amendment). That will never happen.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
If I want to hear it, I'll go to their website. Saves the trees, and keeps my inbox clear.
They're profitting by this e-mail (paid if elected), so it's spam.
So fuck um both. I hope someone brings a class action lawsuit against them if they do this horse-shit.
Not exactly a new experience for me. The Joe Liberman campaign was spamming me at work for months, until he finally gave up on getting nominated. Rather pissed me off.
(Of course, I do work for my Jewish synagogue, but frankly none of us there were about to vote for the guy anyways.)
--
viqsi - See "vixen"
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
In my country I can vote for whom I will because the voting if preferential, and I can decide who gets my vote next if my first preference doesn't get it.
But in a non-preferential system such as you have in america you can be damned sure that I would vote for Kerry even though I don't totally agree with him.
The funny thing is Democrats would win every American presidential election under the sun if you had a preferential system, because the TWO MILLION Ralph Nader voters (he might get more under a preferential system) would put him on their first preference and then the democrat candidate next. The democrats already get more RAW VOTES than the republicans, but adding a 2% or more across the board in every state (500 nader voters in florida perhaps?) would send the republicans out of office.
But then there is the "progressive alliance" who would flow to republicans, and I don't know much about the natural law or that christian group - but all of the others barely add up to 1% if I recall only half or less than half of Naders votes. Sad I know more about america's politics than most of it's citizens do....
Perhaps Nader should make a deal with the democrats....step down for one election in return for a constitutional referendum to reform the presidential voting process at which point he can run again in the new system and will get more votes due to people not feeling they are "wasting" their vote.
bah, sad times we live in.
A little math here, assuming people spend an average of 10s (1/360 hour) looking at one spam message.
/. reader spends less than 1s, but not everyone is that fast).
(Yes, the average
Further assume that the average computer uses 200w (0.2kw) on average. (Probably less, but probably much more when you figure in all the routers, servers, etc that it traveled through).
1 Million Spam Messages / ( 0.2/360 ) = 555 kW*h per Spam
Doesn't seem like much, but keep in mind that is 2 YEARS of electricity (with copious use of A/C and electric heater) for my U.S. located home.
If there are ~200 Million voters, then sending 1 campaign message to each of them would burn enough fossil fuels to power my entire high school graduating class's homes for 3 YEARS...
And who is to say that only one candidate will send one message?
Unfortunately slashdot is even worse. The time I have spent reading articles.... Well, better not go there...
Its not well known but George W. learned dirty campaign tricks as far back as the 1972 Senate campaign which is at the heart of his Alabama National Gaurd controversy. This campaign is noteworthy because Bush's team, though perhaps not him personally, apparently doctored and spliced audio tapes of their Democratic opponent so he appeared to say that he was in favor of busing to force desegration at a time when this was the kiss of death for a politician in Alabama. It didn't work but they tried. Indications are the picture of Kerry behind Jane Fonda doing the rounds this week is also a faked.
a mp aigns/wh2000/stories/rove072399.htmo utherner.net/blog/awolbush.html
Also in 1972 Karl Rove "admitted using a false identity to gain entry to the campaign offices of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon. He admitted stealing letterhead stationary and sending out 1,000 fake invitations to the campaign headquarters opening, promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing." He was cleared after a Republican party investigation by none other than George H.W. Bush. After all, this was 1972 when Nixon and the Republicans were using dirty tricks on a massive scale in an effort to rig elections.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/c
http://www.s
The southerner article, among others, raises the possibility George W. Bush refused to take his National Gaurd physical in 1972, which caused him to be grounded, because this was the year drug testing was instituted by the gaurd and reserves. Its likely he would have failed because he was known to indulge in cocaine and a marijuana while in Alabama, and may have done community service in Texas around this time to have a cocaine charge cleared off his record.
All indications are he received disciplinary action for refusing the physical, and a number of other transgressions, which is why he was transfered to the reserves, normally a sign of punishment for Gaurdsmen, which is where he was when he was finally discharged.
Its hard to figure out all of the machinations of his military service since there is at least a possibility Bush campaign operatives were given the chance to purge his military files of anything negative in the late 1990's.
It is pretty clear that he moved to Alabama without getting Gaurd approval for the transfer. He applied after the fact for a postal unit, which was denied, since the Gaurd frowns on expensive pilots becoming postal workers. They finally transfered him to a reconnaisance unit though they didn't have the F-102's he was qualified for.
The only reason he got in to the Gaurd in the first place was family connections which moved him from the bottom of the list, and destined for Vietnam, to the top of Texas Air National Country Club flying obsolete fighters that would never get sent to Vietnam.
@de_machina
"Dean has the opposite position of the average American on just about every political issue."
This is an odd assertion. I think its widely recognized that Dean was the only Democrat with the hutzpah to:
- attack Bush
- oppose the Patriot Act
- oppose the Iraq war both for the deception used in selling it and the mess its proving to be
- denounce special interests and the way they are outright purchasing our government
Dean's fortunes really turned because Kerry, in particular, stole his message when he realized it was resonating with the majority of Democrats if not half the electorate as a whole. This leaves us with a bizarre hypocrisy where Kerry is now critical of the war in Iraq though he voted for it. He is critical of the Patriot Act though he voted for it and may have written predecessors of it. He is criticizing special interests though he takes more special interest money than anyone in the Senate.
A real plus about Kerry is, if you don't like his positions on the issues, you can just wait a while and he will flip sides to the one you like. Of course he also flips from positions you like to ones you don't with equal randomness. He is completely devoid of conviction which means he is "electable".
In all fairness, Dean did a lot of damage to himself when he stuck his foot in his mouth a few times on things like Saddam and Bin Laden. Its real hard to be a loose cannon, and take controversial positions, and also not stick your foot in your mouth sometimes.
If it hadn't been for Dean the Democrats would have gone in to this election cowering in fear of Bush's invincibility and they would have gone down in flames. Now they at least have a chance since Dean gave them a backbone. Dean also made the first attempt in a while to actually restore democracy to this screwed up country by getting ordinary people involved in politics again, especially with the aid of the Internet which is likely to be the only thing that might save democracy in America. Unfortunately all those people are tasting the bitter pill of how the establishment and the media destroy anyone trying to restore actual democracy, with a little d, to this country. End result is we will have two wealthy aristocrats, both Yale grads, both members of Skull and Bones squaring off in November, to see whether we will have an establishment Democrat or an establishment Republican taking their turn in the White House.
Dean might have said stupid things about Bin Laden, but its not quite as bad as the Bush family having intimate ties to the Bin Laden family. Bush also hushed up the extent Saudi Arabia was involved in 9/11 at the same time they were trying to pin it on Iraq which was probably the country in the Middle East that had the least involvement with Al Quaida, Bathists being secular socialists, not fundementalists, who claim to be Muslim mostly out of convenience. It still seems to be completely lost on Americans, smart people that they are, that the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi for the most part. There were no Iraqi's.
@de_machina
Seriously - do you believe that? Have you seen the deanforamerica website? If you spent more than 5 seconds on it, you'd see the support for Dean is widespread. The only reason you don't know, is because you watch Fox, where dean supporters are called "deaniacs", and he's written off every time he's mentioned. The republican candidates are seen as being buoyant simply because their supporters are the media, and influential people with power. It's not hard to trash opponents when most media outlets are on your side, and it's not hard to look good with those same friends.
Claiming "Dean has the opposite position of the average American on just about every political issue" is sheer ignorance. Dean is committed to protecting peace, freedom, justice and the core American ideals. The only things he doesn't share with other politicians is the fact he doesn't have a price, and he respects the lives of everyone. This man is a real politician, not just a professional one. If you're an American, you should agree with Dean. If not, go vote Bush.
Don't just hear what people are saying, but figure out why they're saying it, and to whom they are accountable.