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Republican Robocall Pretexting Campaign
WCityMike writes, "In 53 Congressional campaigns across the country, including the Pennsylvania 6th, the Connecticut 4th, the North Carolina 11th, the New Hampshire 2nd, and the Illinois 6th and 8th (and possibly all races), the National Republican Congressional Committee is conducting a $2.1 million campaign to make it appear as if Democrats are spamming callers with telemarketing calls. The NRCC hired Conquest Communications Group to conduct a massive nationwide robocalling campaign with calls specifically scripted to appear as if they're coming from the Democratic candidate — in violation of FCC regulations on such 'robocalls,' which requires the identity of the caller to be stated at the beginning of the message [47 CFR 64.1200(b)(1)]. The call begins with 'Hello. I'm calling with information about,' and then says the name of the Democratic candidate. There is then a pause; if the recipient hangs up here, they will receive repeated calls back with the same message, potentially up to 18 times or more (according to one callee). If the callee doesn't hang up, they hear a smear message from the machine about the Democratic candidate. The NRCC thinks the legality of the calls is, conveniently, a 'complicated legal question that's not going to get adjudicated this weekend.'" Update 20:47 GMT by SM: Thankfully we all learned how to deal with these folks last week.
Actually, since most people don't vote for the candidate they want, but instead vote against the one they like the least, negative advertising (including "smear messages") is the most useful information to have.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Oddly enough, I've been getting a bunch of calls supporting our incumbant Republican senator....so many were coming in that I was wondering if it was actually a ploy from the Democrates to get me annoyed and blame the Republicans. However, the only smearing was against the Democrats. Still, what possible marketing model says that the way to get votes is to repeatedly harass potential voters by phone?.
The phrase "out of touch" comes to mind....BTW - I'm a registered independant, and thinking of going Libertarian.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Then when they get elected they will halt all investigations into the matter since they will be in control. Genious! Pure Genious!
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
They're right. It won't get adjudicated this weekend.
However, just like their phone-jamming shenanigans in New Hampshire, it will get adjudicated against their corrupt asses.
So let them have their fun. This kind of crap is exactly why this Republican will be voting against every Republican on tomorrow's ballot.
Funn how my party continues to call the Democratic party one of traitors when it's my party which is undermining democratic principles.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"If you vote Republican, are you guilty of their crimes?"
It's the Republicans. Is anyone actually surprised?
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
This is not a useful comment in the light of the real issue being reported in the original post. You have picked a one-up, unique situation where a rogue individual serves as a bad example of how to conduct oneself during an election. The RNCC actions, on the other hand, are a disgraceful, and illegal action attempting to disenfranchise voters, or get them to think ill of the Democrat candidate at a grand scale (much more effect than a few slashed tires). This is so much more duplicitous and underhanded than one guy's son getting caught slashing tires of potential voters, not that the dumbass who did the tire-slashing deserves any less jail time than those that are behind the the robocalls.
The election system in the USA is broken. Small electoral districts and first-past-the-post results in a two-party hegemony. This could be fixed by enlarging electoral districts to whole states and then allocating all
the congressional seats of a state using the proportional Jefferson Method (equivalent to the D'Hondt Method).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Hondt_method
This would result in viable third parties and real choice. Voting for small parties at the federal level before the system is fixed is futile.
This current system ensures that only two parties exist at federal level. Imagine if there were for example five parties and they got votes in a state like this: 40%, 30%, 15%, 10%, 5%. Wouldn't it then be a good idea to allocate the seats to parties according to their proportional support among voters? Let's suppose that there would be six House seats in that state. Using the D'Hondt method we would get the following allocation
of seats: Party 1: 3 seats, Party 2: 2 seats, Party 3: 1 seat, Parties 4 and 5: no seats. And the hegemony of the two big parties was broken. This system actually works and is fair, unlike the one used in the USA. In Finland we have eight parties in the parliament. A rich variety of opinions and ideologies is always present and no single party can easily gain a dominant status.
Does anyone have an idea what we can do about this, one day before the election?
I believe that Republicans vote Republican and Democrats vote Democrat....the campaign managers know this and they have a pretty good idea of how many of each demographic they have to work with. So, their job isn't to try and convince you who to vote for, you've already decided that. Their job is to get you into the polls so you can actually cast that vote.
Somewhere along the line, they decided that the best motivator was to get you pissed off enough at the other guy that you would make the time to get into the polls.
Unfortunately, this has caused campaigns to go from "vote for me because" to "don't vote for the other guy because".
It just seems to get worse with time.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
You would think... but the politicians who wrote the law remembered to put in a clause allowing politicians to continue to call you. Nice of them, wasn't it?
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
That was one person. This is the RNC itself.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:chTn88IH384J:
Ok before I get flamed for my subject, I'm a Republican, not a NeoCon, I am very moderate by anyones standards.
Here is a little story about a local Republican race here in Minnesota. It is just before the primary, there is a heated race between two individuals for the Rep. Senate nomination. A flier is sent out smearing one candidate, he previously was accused of physically assaulting his daughter, a charge he was later found not guilty of by jury. The flier contained so many false statements it was crazy, to top it off the people who wrote the flier included a graphical logo to make it look like it was sent by our Sheriff's Dept. Unfortunately I was the person who designed that logo for our website. I am the system administrator for that County. Long story short, through my web logs it was discovered that the authors of the flier were members of his own party on the State level. Apparently they felt that the previous accusations against him would be a problem down the line. So they pulled their dirty tricks on one of their own. The best part is that he won the primary. But once again his party stepped in and told him to step aside. He refused and they withheld all party support for his campaign. Just another case of a party that is struggling with scandal doing anything to hold on and keep from falling out of power.
I really don't want to be part of a flame war (I like my karma where it is right now), but it really seems to me that republicans pull this crap off a lot more than democrats. Thinks like the "democrats vote on wednesdays" campaigns, or "[legal] immigrants will be arrested if they come to the polls", or men dressed as leather lingerie-clad homosexuals with signs saying "Vote Democrat so I can adopt" seem to be everywhere. Does anyone have any examples of this happening against republicans? I'll gladly retract my statement if I can see a couple Democrat-sanctioned examples somewhere. I'm aware that I'm a democrat and therefore have selective exposure, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.
It's so morally corrupt that I find it hard to believe that half the country is in the same party as these people. I know that half the country isn't morally corrupt, yet they allow (and often support) this sort of thing.
Yes. The "Do-not-call" list doesn't apply to political calls, but if you tell them not to call, they better not call.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Why don't you just give them a call at 804-358-0560?
The RNCC must have lost it's freaking mind.
Between this, electronic voting, the whole WMD/invade Iraq decision and the Mexican border issue, half of you still vote Republican?
Not that the Dems are much better, but when are people going to start pushing back on the government?
America used to be admired. Now, I just pity you.
Over the past three months the republican incumbant (under investigation by the FBI/DoJ for taking a $30000 vacation given to him by foreign lobbying groups) has been robocalling everyone in the county and some outside the county with calls that are basically designed to make you hang up the second you hear their tagline, "This call is about supporting Charlie Brown" (yes that is the democrat candidate's real name :P). Charlie's campaign doesn't have robocallers, but the actual campaign workers who call were rather surprised to hear from people that they got a robocall three minutes ago claiming it to be from their campaign.
Its rather a shame that the local republican controlled newspaper made no mention of this in their so-called "bad campaigning expose".
Afterall, you are talking about a political party that is down with torture, coerced confessions, extended imprisonment without charges and without access to counsel, and warrantless searches. After all that, we are supposed to get outraged about a violation of FCC regs?
I mean seriously, have Republicans no shame?
They have Morality, which is different. Shame prevents you from being evil. Morality allows you to be as evil as you like, as long as you feel really bad about it.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
A job for RoboGOP!
ok that was bad.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
Nice troll! One drunk left-winger, who has no connection with the DNC, does something stupid, and that's supposed to be morally equivalent to an organized RNC campaign across 53 districts where millions of illegal phonecalls are placed with the explicit goal of deceiving voters. Hmm, somehow the situations seem different.
My fellow citizens, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here today. My opponent has openly admitted he feels an affinity toward your city, but I happen to like this area. It might be a salubrious place to him, but to me it is one of the nation's most delightful garden spots.
When I embarked upon this political campaign, I hoped that it could be conducted on a high level and that my opponent would be willing to stick to the issues. Unfortunately, he has decided to be tractable instead--to indulge in unequivocal language, to eschew the use of outright lies in his speeches, and even to make repeated veracious statements about me.
At first I tried to ignore these scrupulous, unvarnished fidelities. Now I will do so no longer. If my opponent wants a fight, he's going to get one!
It might be instructive to start with his background. My friends, have you ever accidentally dislodged a rock on the ground and seen what was underneath? Well, exploring my opponent's background is dissimilar. All the slime and filth and corruption you can possibly imagine, even in your wildest dreams, are glaringly nonexistent in this man's life. And even in his childhood!
Let us take a very quick look at that childhood: It is a known fact that, on a number of occasions, he emulated older boys at a certain playground. It is also known that his parents not only permitted him to masticate in their presence, but even urged him to do so. Most explicable of all, this man who poses as a paragon of virtue exacerbated his own sister when they were both teenagers!
I ask you, my fellow Americans: is this the kind of person we want in public office to set an example for our youth?
Of course, it's not surprising that he should have such a typically pristine background--no, not when you consider the other members of his family:
His female relatives put on a constant pose of purity and innocence, and claim they are inscrutable, yet every one of them has taken part in hortatory activities.
The men in the family are likewise completely amenable to moral suasion.
My opponent's uncle was a flagrant heterosexual.
His sister, who has always been obsessed by sects, once worked as a proselyte outside a church.
His father was secretly chagrined at least a dozen times by matters of a pecuniary nature.
His youngest brother wrote an essay extolling the virtues of being a homo sapien.
His great-aunt expired from a degenerative disease.
His nephew subscribes to a phonographic magazine.
His wife was a thespian before their marriage and even performed the act in front of paying customers.
And his own mother had to resign from a women's organization in her later years because she was an admitted sexagenarian.
Now what shall we say about the man himself?
I can tell you in solemn truth that he is the very antithesis of political radicalism, economic irresponsibility and personal depravity. His own record proves that he has frequently discountenanced treasonable, un-American philosophies and has perpetrated many overt acts as well.
He perambulated his infant on the street.
He practiced nepotism with his uncle and first cousin.
He attempted to interest a 13-year-old girl in philately.
He participated in a seance at a private residence where, among other odd goings-on, there was incense.
He has declared himself in favor of more homogeneity on college campuses.
He has advocated social intercourse in mixed company - and has taken part in such gatherings himself.
He has been deliberately averse to crime in our city streets.
He has urged our Protestant and Jewish citizens to develop more catholic tastes.
Last summer he committed a piscatorial act on a boat that was flying the U.S. flag.
Finally, at a time when we must be on our guard against all foreign isms, he has cooly announced his belief in altruism - and his fervent hope that some day this entire nation will be altruistic!
I beg you,
Here's a column published in Philly by someone thinking Democrats were harassing her with robocalls. Even though they sensibly asked why Democrats would do such a thing when it would turn voters off, they thought it was the Democratic candidate. Pretty typical reaction.
Their untypical reaction was to call the Democrat's office demanding an explanation. Which turned out to be "it's a Republican dirty trick". But how many people will find out before voting? And how many people will believe it's not Democrats lying to blame Republicans, when they already believe Democrats have been harassing them with robocalls?
Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, Republicans have followed up their 2002 phonejamming of Democrats' lines (preventing Democrats from getting voters to polls) with enough illegal robocalls to cost $100 MILLION in fines. Of course, those 2002 robocalls got John Sununu Jr (R-NH) into the Senate, where he controls the FCC, and he hasn't given up the job he DDoS'ed his way into. So I don't expect Republicans to cough up the $100M they'd owe for this year's attack on the election process.
Unless maybe enough Republicans get fired in the election tomorrow that they can't do these crimes unpunished anymore. Go to the polls and do your part.
--
make install -not war
This story is amusing because Republicans are claiming the same thing about Democrats. In fact, a caller on Rush Limbaugh's show today described a call she received at 3 in the morning from someone claiming to be a Republican, and that others are also receiving calls specifically from 10 to 3 at night, the theory being that pranksters are trying to anger voters.
"Sufferin' succotash."
The actions of a few Democratic campaign workers who affected a few Republican voters in no way compares to a coordinated, tens or hundreds of thousand dollar strategy by a national Republican organization, affecting over 300,000 Democratic voters.
You can try this website:
http://www.vote-smart.org/
I'm in Mass, and I think they do a decent job with handling the information. For those who are in a voting office, you can see their records. Another really helpful thing is to check the NPAT (National Political Awareness Test) results, if available. Being the day before the election, the site seems to be running a bit slow, so be patient. Hope the site is helpful. (I am not affilated with vote-smart.org in any way)
I'm saddened that politicos still find a way to shock me, even after all these years. Why is it that its always The People that wind up being abused to further one person's agenda? I suppose someone will make a comment that it's just indicative of just how desperate the Republicans are, but they've stooped to such low tactics before.
I think most Republicans just shrug this off when Democrats do it. I've been getting something similar to this from the Democratic party for a couple weeks. At first I thought it was a message from a Republican candidate (that I know fairly well) but it quickly turned into a malicious slamming with outright lies (I knew they were because I was involved with some of the things mentioned). I shrugged and hung up. I don't care. Truth of the matter is that both sides do really stupid things during campaigns and I'm not real proud of anyone during campaign time. But it seems to me that Democrats tend to yell louder and cry foul more but Republicans seem to quietly shrug their shoulders and let their vote speak for them. I think that's why it seem that Republicans do this underhanded stuff more. But from where I"m standing, both sides do it about equally.
As a side note, I'm a Canadian so I can't vote but I've lived in the U.S. for 7 years and am somewhat active in local politics and government because I live here and have a stake in things too. I can't vote, but I can tell my voting friends what I think on topics and individual politicians and let them decide for themselves.
Oh, bullshit.
You heard some astroturfer call in to Rush Limbaugh today with this and now you are claiming it is happening to you.
It's very easy to see what Republicans are up to.... just look for what they are accusing Democrats of doing, and then you'll know.
As Haggard, Foley, and others continue to prove... the GOP is the party of extreme hypocrisy. If you want to know what they're up to, just listen for what they're yelling about from the other side.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
A vote for the Democrats is a vote for baby eating! (*)
(*) This message brought to you by the Republican Never-Ate-A-Baby Committee.
STFU about slashdot bias.
The modern GOP (by that I mean since Eisenhower, and Ike wasn't even truly a Republican. He was apolitical -- as the entire military was up until Reagan -- and then ended with his Presidential tenure with the infamous warning of the Military-Industrial Complex. I'd like to see any Republican give such a speech today.) has a long history of dirty tricks, from the Watergate break in, all the way to today. In the 2002 election the GOP jammed the Democratic phone banks in New Hampshire. People went to jail because of that. Race baiting ads as part of their "southern strategy". Challenging legal voters based on bogus "felon lists." Challenging voters to present photo id when it's not a requirement. Informing voters in predominately black neighborhoods that the election was either postponed, or directing them to the wrong precincts. Frankly it's not surprising. The same ones that were running the party back then are the same ones running the party now. Total contempt for democracy. Macavelli would be proud.
No. Democrats don't do these sort of things.. Arguably, because liberals are "too pussy" to cheat, and "too naive" and believe in fair elections.
There was a time when the "Vote Facist for Law and Order" bumper stickers were funny. Now the seem just a bit too truthful.
--
"When the president does it that means that it is not illegal."
-- Richard Nixon, May 19, 1977 interview with Robert Frost
No, you don't understand.
Anyone, doing anything, is the fault of the Democratic party. Someone make comments about how they don't think bin Laden's that bad? That's what Democrats think. Someone make a video mocking Bush and post it on YouTube? That's what Democrats think. Someone publish personal information about a congressman mother and urge poeple to harrass her? That's what Democrats think. A random blogger make a comment about how thinks only idiots would join the military at this moment? That's what Democrats think.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, people like Limbaugh and Malkin can say and do whatever they want, because they're not representive of the Republican party at all and the Republican party has nothing to do with them. Hell, actual Republican elected officials, if they get caught doing something evil, can just blame it on alcohol or cry some and it obviously doesn't reflect on the Real Republicans.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
DNC is not on your "do not call list" except in your head. They are exempt, as are the Republicans. As are "Otters for Clean Streams" for that matter. The DNC and the RNC have spent millions calling people. But that has no bearing on this issue. The issue here is the fact that they are repeatedly calling after you hang up, which is illegal. They are also making it look like a member of the opposite party is doing it. Which may be illegal.
This has no bearing on whether or not you like getting phone calls during election season.
Actually, the stock market has done better when the democrats were in power, according to NPR (no citation) and this Yahoo! Finance article. So, I welcome the change that is likely to happen tomorrow.
PS - I didn't get any stinking Bush tax cut. I'm not rich enough. Repeal the damn thing already!
Republicans engaged in phone jamming in 2004:
8 29056
c le/2006/05/16/AR2006051601712.html
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1
a Republican official was CONVICTED of this, too:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Josh Marshall, at Talkingpointsmemo http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ has a pointer http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001944.php to the google cache version http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:chTn88IH384J: www.conquestgroup.com/ContactUs/Contact.cfm+%22con quest+communications%22+and+contact&hl=en&gl=us&ct =clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a
of Conquest Communications' contact page. When I called 804-358-0560, I got an electronic voice giving a list of two digit extensions counting up from around 24. I picked a random one, politely gave my (real) name and (real) phone number, said I had heard about the robocalling and wondered if they guy had any comment. I hope he calls me back!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
at least give the attribution:
Guaranteed Effective All-Occasion Non-Slanderous Political Smear Speech
By Bill Garvin
MAD #139, December 1970
If you're measuring the quality of a system of government by the length of time a government lasts, totalitarian dictatorship wins. There's a balance to find between being so stable that you don't respond to the will of the people and being so unstable that you can never get anything done. At the moment the US is on the too stable side.
I see the Republicans have even paid people to post messages to Slashdot smearing the Democrats.
First off:
The Dems are On this, filing one of the only C&D letters I've actually supported. Kinda brilliant of the NeoCons, really -- they hire an impersonator to make a fake 5 minute message, robocall it at 11 PM till 4 AM, make it long enough that most people hang up long before they hear the "paid for by the Republicans" message at the end, and, well, it's just brilliant. Too bad the Democrats are too ethical to try something like this themselves.
Jim Webb's campaign is also being specifically targeted by this, in what is probably a "test run" by Karl Rove. Robo calls are reporting that people will get arrested if they vote, that their locations have changed, pamphlets are being handed out telling black people not to bother voting, and the Voting Machines are set up to "accidently" mess Mr. Webb's name up. Even the Board of Elections are saying these efforts are Widespread and Deliberate (and, oh yeah, ILLEGAL).
Kinda a pity that the Republicans are so afraid of the United States Citizens voices being heard that they have to resort to such disgusting efforts to repress the vote. Of course, having seen this the last 3 elections in a row, this isn't a real surprise.
So what you're saying is, the Republican party is evil, and the Democrats are too incompetetent to pick up on these same strategies?
Well, that's not quite how I'd put it. Again, I'd say that the people calling the shots in the GOP are, if not actually evil, extremely nasty, unethical, and willing to stoop to almost any level to get/keep power. I'm not sure that I would call the Democrats incompetent, but I think that there are a lot of progressive types in the Democratic party (go figure) who are willing to put principles over power. Maybe that makes them foolish, but I think that there is a certain reason to it. I think it's similar to saying that if the US tortures it's POWs then we aren't any different than the insurgents who kidnap, torture and kill people to make Jihadi videos. If we are willing to take our own citizens off the streets and lock them away forever without access to the courts, or even without their families knowing what happened to them, then we are no better than the Iraqi regime that we helped to topple. By the same token, I think that the Democrats largely believe that if they stoop to the level of the Ken Mehlmens and Karl Roves of the world, then they would be no better and no more worthy of governing than the Republicans are.
It undoubtedly sucks to get repeatedly beaten by dirty tricks, but the tricksters don't always win. And how much better must it feel if you can win cleanly?
What, the 2,800+ Americans killed in Iraq by IEDs, snipers, etc, don't count? By my accounting, that's nearly another September 11th's worth of dead Americans.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Not in Australia. We do have proportional representation and coalition governments but it hasn't resulted in instability. Our governments typically last longer than US governments, probably because we don't have a two term rule.
Our main right wing party is a coalition of the Liberal and National parties. They get along pretty well.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I can count 300K people estimated dead over 20 years in the state.gov link above.
There was an estimate hanging around of 600K people which died since the start of the US invasion.
Even if it was 1/6 less than that and in reality 100K this is the number of live lost over way LESS than the 20 years than Saddam had.
So.... Quote "has resulted in tens of thousands fewer" sorry but this is not true. Extrapolated over the same time period, the us invasion any way you see it killed MORE people than if Saddam was still in power. ESPECIALLY that all massacre happenned while he was a US "friend". He refrained from anything way too bad in the last years.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org