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Democratic Super PAC Buys Newtgingrich.com
netbuzz writes "The purchase of newtgingrich.com by a Democratic Super PAC — and the use of it to highlight Newt Gingrich's political weaknesses — is either amusing or a dirty trick, depending on your politics and your view of the Republican presidential hopeful. In either case, however, it is a cautionary tale about the importance of controlling your brand online, a task that is about to get more difficult for everyone thanks to the impending expansion of generic top-level domains."
I think it's a bit of a dirty trick regardless of your politics.
In this day and age it is the responsibility of a public person (or a company) to protect their name, which includes domain names. The fact that Mr Gingrich has been in politics for a long time and didn't bother to purchase the domain says a lot about his understanding of how some things work in this day and age.
"amusing or a dirty trick, depending on your politics??"
I am not a fan for Newt Gingrich but this is a dirty trick.
People who want to learn about the candidate will want to go to their web site to see their official stance on things. This is an attempt to keep the public misinformed by the opposition.
Mr. Gingrich has a sorted political past, and if you go to the others web sites they will tell all about it. You really need to hear his side too for people to get a full picture of who you should be voting for.
Lets all complain how stupid the voters are and they don't do their research, then in the same breath we reward and pat on the back members of your political beliefs their attempt to misdirect the public to only see their views.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's sad what we have come to expect from politicians. On one hand, this is a dirty low down trick. On the other hand, Newt is a lying, cheating ass, so it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But so are all the other Washington politicians, lobbyists and PAC executives, on both sides of the aisle. So on some primal level I get entertained when it happens to someone I don't like a lot, like when I'm watching professional wrestling or a soap opera. And this is where our government has degenerated to.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
When a politician says he intends to pass Bill X, you expect him to pass Bill X. And yet these scumbags never do what they say.
Why should anyone be in the least bit shocked that politicians are being dishonest?
Have we really still not learned that as long as we maintain representative democracy, we will maintain corruption?
Is nobody yet ready for trying something new?
How about it is an amusing dirty trick. I like the political horse race and I guess it is my spectator sport, but this is pretty dirty, but at the same time I find it amusing as hell. Gingrich isn't my candidate but tactics like this just distract from the real issues, but unfortunatly the 2 most important factors in an election tend to be BS and wedge issues to get your base out.
Time to offend someone
Shortly before a San Francisco Mayoral election a friend by the name of Andy Hasse registered the .coms of all of the expected candidates. One such candidate, upon finding that his domain was cyberly squatted upon, asked what he could do about it. Andy pitched his web consulting services then was hired by that candidate to do his site.
Andy was at the time a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz and was living the Bohemian lifestyle in The Mission District. He was just starting out. Imagine his great surprise - and mine as well - when Andy made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle when the Willie Brown campaign discovered that willybrown.com was owned by one of the staff for a competing campaign.
That was a long time ago; I'm not sure that the article would still be online. Let me check... Ah! Here We Go!
Willie Brown is to San Frasncisco politics as the Kennedys were once to American politics. While Willie has many supporters in San Francisco, it's quite definitely old-skool big-city machine politices.
I suggested that Andy take advantage of his fifteen minutes by offering him some free hosting. The Willie Brown website is no longer online, with the registrant being hidden by a private registration service. But based on the creation date, that domain just has to still owned by Andy.
Let's ask The Wayback Machine... Service With A Smile.
Sometime later an incredibly right-wing guy by the name of Dan Lungren was running for California State Attorney General. "Did you register Dan Lundgren's domain?" I asked Andy.
"Yup," he replied. "Com, Net and Org."
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Whatever conservativism means in modern America, Gingrich is it. He would describe himself as conservative, his allied would describe themselves as conservatives, and his opposition describes him as conservative. He lead the 1994 Republican revolution that put conservatives back in power in the US. If Gingrich isn't conservative, you're going to have to rewrite almost 20 years of political history. If your particular political persuasion isn't compatible with Gingrich's, you need to find a less overloaded term for it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You can point out whatever you like about a candidate, but don't try and deceive the voters by registering a domain name of your opponents name. That's a dirty trick, it should be called out for what it is, not spun away like this is politics as usual. And that's what everyone should be upset about: This is an attempt to deceive voters or at the very least prevent Newt from registering the domain he in any fairness has a right to.
I would say the same thing if a Republican tried this. It's low down and dirty and is on the same level as having your opponents removed from the ballot on a technicality. If you can't stand without perpetrating fraud against voters then how honest can I expect you to be when you're elected and actually have a bit of power?
Just tried the link http://newtgingrich.com/ and up comes freddiemac.com
Looks like it is on a rotating forwarder. The briefest of examinations suggests that it sends people to a URL from this list:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/12/gingrichs-campaign-still-looks-awful-lot-book-tour/45977/
http://www.greektravel.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/gingrich-senior-aides-resign/2011/06/09/AGN77VNH_blog.html
http://www.tiffany.com/?siteid=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaZFfQKWX54
http://www.freddiemac.com/
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/09/11/60353/gingrich-porn/
http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=654836
I think it is great. I'd think it was funny if it happened to any politician, or any public figure really.
At a minimum it is funny because of all the people who will get their panties in a wad over it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Do you know what Corporate Welfare is?
The Republicans are all for Big Government provided it benefit the rich.
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Gingrich - isn't he the one that stole Christmas?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
It's very important that you understand that a PAC or this SuperPAC is not the same thing as the Democratic Party. In fact, they are legally barred from coordinating their activities. So even if you think this is a dirty move, it's not fair to blame the Democratic Party or any of its candidates for this. In fact, they can't even legally tell this SuperPAC to knock it off - that would be coordination, and it's not allowed. No, I think this is a stunt by some misguided well-wishers. Sadly, both parties seem to have more than their fair share of these. (BTW, every Democratic partisan I've ever met or heard of is praying to Santa Claus that Newt gets nominated. Something stinks about this whole story.),
I think (in the general election) that what Romney loses in extremists he will more than make up for moderates (including moderate Democrats who voted for Obama last time).
Of course, Huntsman would be an even better general election candidate, but he really is unelectable in the primary.
Finally, keep in mind that Gingrich more-or-less invented the ultra-adversarial tactics that are causing the gridlock in D.C. that lots of citizens (including Republicans) are so pissed off about right now. Hopefully, folks keep that in mind on election day.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Her very first impression of the United States upon her very first visit here was the appalling condition of our roads. I was surprised at this, as I had always figured our roads were just fine, but upon my next visit to her home in Nova Scotia, I just had to agree. I later lived in Canada for several years and just had to agree that the roads everywhere I went were in immaculate condition.
Contrast this to the United States: in the October 1989 Loma Prieta quake, the top deck of the two-deck portion of Interstate 880 through Oakland collapsed onto the bottom deck, killing I think sixty-nine people. Some poor woman had her legs pinned under many tons of concrete. The only hope of saving her life was to use a power saw to cut both her legs off without the use of any anesthesia of any sort.
More recently the bridge on an Interstate highway between Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota collapsed, killing I think eleven people in an incredibly cruel way by dropping their cars from a great height into a deep river.
The authorized widely broadcast requests that anyone that had ever taken photos of that bridge turn them into the civil engineering authorities for their post-mortem. Careful examination found that some of the bolts in that bridge had been stretched noticably out of place as long as five years before!
I mentioned this to a friend who is a Professional Engineer - that's the proper term for a Civil Engineer. The fact that people get killed when people like him screw up is the reason that it would be a criminal expense for him to even claim to be a Professional Engineer without the proper license.
"That's impossible," he said. "Every bridge is inspected every two years."
I don't doubt that bridge was inspected every two years, but nevertheless it did fall down and kill a bunch of people.
If America were willing to tax itself enough to properly maintain its infrastructure, all those deaths and permanently crippling injuries just never would have happened.
I vastly preferred living in Canada for the specific reason that the Canadians are only too happy to tax themselves to provide for the common good. I always told people that Canada was the way America should be, and could be, but isn't.
I lost my immigration when Bonita divorced me. For quite a long time I wanted to return, and there are other ways I could still become a Canadian Landed Immigrant, and eventually a Canadian citizen.
One reason I don't, and chose eventually to remain in the United States, is so that I could work towards someday putting a stop to damnfool ignorant people such as yourself who are driving my Mother Country into the ground.
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In good times when you cut taxes on business they expand and hire more people, that's basic right wing (Republican) mantra and history mostly supports it. Unfortunately the rules change during a recession. In bad times when you give a corporation more money they put it in the bank. (just like you would.) Why? In good times they expand production so they can sell more. In bad times they have piles of unsold merchandise, and hiring more people to make more (unsold) merchandise is just throwing money away.
No, its not. The U.S. Government isn't the product of a design effort with a coherent objective. Its the product of centuries of individual compromises on specific issues between not merely diverse but -- from the outset -- radically opposed priorities.
It was designed at the outset (of the Constitutional system) both to run fast and have strong central power (one of the main motives for revising the Articles of Confederation to produce the Constitution) and to be hamstrung and dependent on the States. There are features -- in the text of the Constitution (original and in amendments), in the statute law, in the case law, in the bodies of federal regulations and other binding executive acts -- that represent far extremes and every conceivable point in between, implemented on narrow issues over the whole history of the Republic, with little in the way of rationalization over time.
To say that the US government is designed to do any one particular thing (other than be the US government) or to implement any one particular philosophy of the role, scale, or model of government is, well, fundamentally wrong and more misleading than useful.
I mentioned this to a friend who is a Professional Engineer - that's the proper term for a Civil Engineer. The fact that people get killed when people like him screw up is the reason that it would be a criminal expense for him to even claim to be a Professional Engineer without the proper license.
No, a Professional Engineer in one licensed in his/her state. Most engineers are not, whether they are Civil Engineers, or any other type. Most of the Professional Engineers that I have met were Mechanical Engineers, as it happens, but could be Chemical, Electrical, Nuclear, Welding, Aeronautical, or whatever other type you can remember. However, it would be a criminal offense for your friend to claim to be a Professional Engineer in any of the subtypes other than Civil, just as my friends could not legally claim to be Professional Civil Engineers.