Democratic Super PAC Buys Newtgingrich.com 630
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."
How about both (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a good way to get a job as a webmaster (Score:5, Interesting)
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! [sfgate.com]
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 [williebrown.com] 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. [archive.org]
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."
Re:Dirty trick (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest I can't. I don't trust mob rule. You may think you can but I'm actually old enough to remember what happens when the mob has its way. Sorry but your competing with real life experience, so you're just wasting your time trying to convince me otherwise.
Right. Because it wasn't like people didn't actually go to a town hall and organized prior to the internet. How did we survive as a nation without the internet?
Maybe. At least Rick Perry actually put the effort into running for office to promote his party's and his own interests. The average person don't even show up to vote. The US has the lowest percentage of people who actually put forth the effort to vote. If the average person isn't smart enough to know the importance of voting than how do we expect our choice in leaders to be any better?
I know it sounds like a novel idea but you actually leave your basement and go to a polling place to cast your vote on who you'd think would be a better leader. Don't like the two party system then form another party that represents your views. You people seem to have plenty of time to occupy various town squares and do jazz hands but don't seem to have the focus to actually do anything.
Don't like the current state of our electoral process? The existence of Super PACs? Then use it against them. Nothing prevents you from forming your own super PAC and collecting money to generate commercials to the public that promotes your political ideology.
Sorry for the rant... I just hate it when people blame the system for their own apathy.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Ummm... lowering taxes is "bad for the United States". How exactly do you backup that comment? I don't think me or any other taxpayer is going to be hurt too badly if you take less money away.
If your own selfish interests are more important than those of your country and your countrymen, there's not much point in arguing with you. Please note that "enlightened self interest" is a right wing debating point, not a fact of life.
Interesting. You stealing my money makes me selfish for not asking you to steal more.
You forgot it's not your money it's money the government has enabled you to make and as such they are entitled to it.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Interesting)
The same could be argued against cutting Public Radio or the national endowment of the arts funding. Every cut you make will be a drop in the bucket. Every tax raised may also be a drop in the bucket. But, but collecting those drops into a bucket, it gets filled up.
The problem is this: The budget is comprised of social insurance programs, the military, interest on the debt, and "Everything Else." If you cut the entirety of "Everything Else," you will not close the deficit. The deficit is not caused by NPR or the Department of Education. It is caused by foreign wars and Medicare. At the other end of the spectrum, raising taxes by the amount it would take to close the deficit would be (and this is the technical term that economists use) "very bad."
The reason why the Tea Party candidates are dishonest is that they have no plan. They don't want to raise taxes, but if you ask them what they want to cut, they either give you some completely useless answer because the thing they list is 0.1% of the budget, or they provide something even more meaningless like "[unspecified] pork barrel projects."
The Democrats are dishonest for exactly the same reasons. You can't balance the budget with just taxes. And it probably isn't worth cutting anything in the category of "Everything Else" -- most of that stuff is pretty important, and none of it is very expensive. But the Democrats don't want to be heard suggesting cuts to military spending or social insurance either.
The elephant in the room is that those are the only options. The only way to eliminate the deficit without raising taxes at all is to cut all military and social insurance spending in half. The only way to eliminate the deficit without raising taxes so much that the economy goes back into the recession is by cutting those things by at least 25%.
The final alternative is to just say fuck it and keep running huge deficits without cuts. Those are the options. There is no option that allows you to close the deficit without raising taxes or cutting anything important. There is no option that allows you to close the deficit without goring anybody's ox. So you have to pick an ox, you have to gore it, and that is very inconvenient for politicians, so they get on the TV and lie to you about whose fault it is and what is going to happen.
The truth is they're probably just going to keep running huge deficits, regardless of who is in office, because nobody is willing to take on the AARP or the defense industry.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Interesting)
So right there you just killed the discussion.
We go from there are too many /too high taxes to "well, there should just be no taxes at all and there would be no police, fire...blah blah blah". In a word, Strawman.
Find a post where someone says all taxes should be abolished.
Can't?
OK, then maybe we can start the discussion again.
Re:Expecting honesty from politicians?!???!?!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Both parties are not the same. People keep saying "Democrats don't want to cut programs and they want to raise taxes", but consistently time and time again the party that both cut (or raised) taxes responsibly and cut programs have been the Democrats. Sure Obama passed a massive temporary stimulus, but unlike Bush he's also been cutting at fundamental programs in the budget as well, and he's been working to fix Medicare. You may not like the Obamacare bill, but remember rather than fix the problem the last Republican president passed a massive NEW entitlement without the ability to negotiate for lower drug prices. Democrats are not perfect and Republicans aren't all bad, but Democrats have definitely proven over the past couple decades that they are the party of fiscal responsibility.
It's especially hard to deal with Republican rhetoric since they are exactly the ones who are responsible for me knowing that a budget deficit in a recession is often cleared up once you get back into a boom time, and slashing jobs during a recession prolongs the recession. Republican campaign rhetoric taught me that. It's pretty obvious that the Tea Party has one goal and they're willing to give up things like payroll tax cuts to do it - "keep the economy bad so that Obama can't get re-elected". They're willing to keep millions unemployed to achieve that goal. And obviously there's a large part of the mainstream Republican party who doesn't think that way, but there's a strong enough faction of economic terrorists that do. And comparing them to Democrats or even mainstream Republicans is extremely disingenuous.