Online campaigns

Normally, I start these things out by saying ‘My Fellow Americans.’ Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don’t know who more than half of you are anymore. I do know something terrible has happened, and that you’re really not fellow Americans any longer.

I’ll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: There’s been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I’m quitting is simple. I’m fed up with you people. I’m fed up because you have no understanding of what’s really going on in the world. Or of what’s going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

Let’s start local. You’ve been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media. Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that’s despite record numbers of homeowners, including record numbers of MINORITY homeowners. And while we’re mentioning minorities, I’ll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton administration. I’ve mentioned all those things before, but it doesn’t seem to have sunk in.

Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there’s increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beachfront property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don’t give me this ‘blood for oil’ thing. If I were trading blood for oil I would’ve already seized Iraq’s oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don’t give me this ‘Bush Lied; People Died’ crap either. If I were the liar you morons take me for, I could’ve easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be ‘discovered.’ Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty.

Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named ‘Clinton’ established that policy. Bet you didn’t know that, did you? Now some of you morons are considering another and more evil Clinton for president !!!! Go figure that one!! She wants to take your kids away and let the ‘Whole Village’ raise them! i.e. governmental indoctrination .. Look this one up you dumb *****!

The rest of you morons want to be led by a junior senator with no understanding of foreign policy or economics, and this nitwit says we should attack Pakistan, a nucular ally. And then he wants to go to Iran and make peace with a terrorist who says he’s going to destroy us. While he’s doing that, he wants to give Iraq to al Qaeda, Afghanistan to the Taliban, Israel to the Palestinians, and your money to the IRS so the government can give welfare to illegal aliens, who he will make into citizens, so they can vote to reelect him. He also thinks it’s okay for Iran to have nucular weapons, and we should stop our foreign aid to Israel. Did you sleep through high school?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to out spend and out-tech them.

That’s not the case this time. The soldiers of our new enemy don’t care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That’d be fine, as long as they weren’t also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you, and the bastards are all over the globe.

You should be grateful that they haven’t gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you’re not. That’s because you’ve got no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement, and homeland security people have worked to make sure of that. When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I’m disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of ‘Survivor.’

Instead, you’ve grown impatient. You’re incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.

Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat’s political campaign, well, dang it, you might just as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same thing.

In this day and age, it’s easy enough to find the truth. It’s all over the Internet. It just isn’t on the pages of the New York Times, USA Today, or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you’d be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol or Dancing with Stars.

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you’re too stupid to leave a city that’s below sea level and has a hurricane approaching.

I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money comes from. But I’ve come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I’m going back to Crawford. I’ve got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient for years. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I’m done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney’s quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that’s it. God bless what’s left of America.

Some of you know what I mean. The rest of you, kiss off.

PS – You might want to start learning Farsi, and buy a Koran.
You clowns would be bitter too if you had been so unfairly attacked like Bush has!

I have long thought that there is some master mind behind Obama’s campaign. More Intelligent, more powerful than any of the others. I heard someone ask if Soros had a hand in the current mess. I went to the internet to see just who Soros is. The average American has never heard of him. But it seems that he is an expert in Economics and Wall Street dealings. Apparently he is also in the same boat as some of Obama other far left friends. Would it be possible for one man to manipulate the market at the right time to sway the election to his man Obama?

He regularly visits Czechoslovakia.

He thinks “rich” people are people who make $5 million a year or more.

He can’t remember how many houses he owns.

His campaign thinks the economic slowdown is all in our heads.

He doesn’t know how to use the Internet — despite the fact that it is one of the fastest growing economic markets.

Huh?

And I’m not an Obamaniac; I think both candidates have faults.
Umm…Homeless In Phoenix,

Czechoslovakia doesn’t exist. It was split into two countries (Czech Republic and Slovakia) in 1993. Just shows how ignorant McCain (and, apparently, you), are. Please don’t give me your scorn without knowing what you are saying.

McCain thinks that the ONLY people who are rich make $5 million dollars a year or higher, sorry I should have rephrased it.

And if you can’t remember how many houses you own, are you really in touch with the millions of Americans suffering foreclosures and losing their money from collapsed banks?

The Obama campaign has shattered all fund-raising records, raking in $458 million so far, with about half the bounty coming from donors who contribute $200 or less.

Aides say that’s an illustration of a truly democratic campaign. To critics, though, it can be an invitation for fraud and illegal foreign cash because donors giving individual sums of $200 or less don’t have to be publicly reported.

Consider the cases of Obama donors “Doodad Pro” of Nunda, N.Y., who gave $17,130, and “Good Will” of Austin, Texas, who gave more than $11,000—both in excess of the $2,300-per-person federal limit. In two recent letters to the Obama campaign, Federal Election Commission auditors flagged those (and other) donors and informed the campaign that the sums had to be returned. Neither name had ever been publicly reported because both individuals made online donations in $10 and $25 increments.

“Good Will” listed his employer as “Loving” and his occupation as “You,” while supplying as his address 1015 Norwood Park Boulevard, which is shared by the Austin nonprofit Goodwill Industries. Suzanha Burmeister, marketing director for Goodwill, said the group had “no clue” who the donor was. She added, however, that the group had received five puzzling thank-you letters from the Obama campaign this year, prompting it to send the campaign an e-mail in September pointing out the apparent fraudulent use of its name.

“Dooda

I guess this proves it, internet “viral” marketing is a joke!

Many supporters have been wondering or even worrying about the weak 1–3% opinion polling support Ron Paul has had. There are several reasons why opinion polling produces these results that most people do not know about.

1) Opinion polls are mostly conducted by using telephone landlines. The reason is that landline numbers are easy to obtain, and they produce a fairly accurate and random result for most questionnaires. As known from marketing, each product has a life cycle, and those who hang on to landline numbers tend to be late adopters of new technology. These late adopters do not use the internet, so they have (most likely) not even heard of Ron Paul. For them the choice is still between Rudy McRomney which is thus reflected on the polling result. Due to this sampling error the real support for Ron Paul is most likely stronger than the opinion polls show.

2) Many opinion polls count answers selectively. They reason that by counting only certain given opinions, uncertainty and randomness will be reduced in the opinion polling results. For example, the opinion polls ask questions such as: are you a registered supporter of the Republican party, have you voted in primaries before, what is your yearly income, when where you born etc. These questions are then used to eliminate groups such as non-registered republicans or young people. Even if this elimination is mostly statistically justified, it reduces the showing support for surprise candidates such as Ron Paul, especially when an important part of Ron Paul’s campaign is to mobilize voters who do not usually vote in primaries.

3) In order to reduce the inaccuracy between two polls conducted by the same pollster, vote multipliers are added, which can be based on earlier polls, prior elections, “scientific” analyzes or just simply guesses. Here is how they work. Let’s say that a vote multiplier for Rudy Giuliani is 1.2, for John McCain 1.5 and for Ron Paul –3.0. If the pure poll gives Giuliani 25%, McCain 10% and Ron Paul 10% of the vote, the opinion polls are counted to show 30% for Giuliani, 15% for McCain and only 3% for Ron Paul. The chances are that opinion polls for Ron Paul have negative multipliers, since no-one conducting the polls believes that he can win. The same phenomenon has happened in various European countries during the last five years when so-called far right parties (with anti-immigration, anti-EU and fiscal conservative views) have taken many land-slide victories, even if their results in opinion polls have been often either poor or mediocre.

4) Opinion polls are not value free or interest neutral. Even if the opinion polling company would want to conduct a poll on honest scientific standards, they still know that their poll has been ordered by USA Today, NBC, FOX News, the Washington Post or the New York Times. So a polling company’s self-interest is to produce a result that the mainstream media likes. These news agencies are not interested in polls that predict a great result for Ron Paul, if they would get one, they would not publish it. This can be seen by just looking back at the polling results from as late as late April. During late April most polls did not even include Ron Paul as a potential running candidate! He only starts to show up regularly after mid-May, where as undeclared ‘candidate’ Fred Thompson has been included since the very beginning.

Opinion polls often lie, just like statistics do. The opinion polling for the Republican primary clearly underestimates Ron Paul’s real popularity, which may already be around 10%. For example, sportsbook.com (a betting site – not a pro–Ron Paul site) currently places his odds 5th in the Republican candidate nomination race and 9th in the 2008 Presidential Elections. But let’s suppose that I am wrong and the opinion polls do show the real support for Ron Paul. Still, his chances for winning are very good, for the following reasons.

1) As Justin Ptak correctly pointed out, “the national polls are entirely a reflection of name identification, not voters’ views of the candidates.” For example Carter was only polling 1% in 1975 and he won the presidency. Back in 1991 Clinton’s support was at 2% and he became the president. Joe Lieberman was leading the Democratic presidential nomination in 2003, yet he failed to win a single primary.

2) The opinion polls also fail to grasp that the Ron Paul revolution is not only a revolution of ideas; it is also revolutionizing campaign methods. Campaign methods seldom change, but in the US presidential elections they have done so twice in the past. Back in 1825 when John Quincy Adams won the presidency he revolutionized campaigning by distributing buttons and other campaign gimmicks. A second campaigning revolution took place in the 1961 elections when the televised mass media made JFK the president. The Ron Paul revolution of 2008 could be the third campaigning revolution. Earlier it was easier for politicians to lie and get away with it. Today prior speeches and voting records are easily obtainable and thus politicians become increasingly accountable of what they have ever said or done. Furthermore the mass media can no longer determine the election winners. In such an environment the few sincere honest politicians like Ron Paul will win.

3) All conducted opinion polls measure the general opinion on candidates. In elections where half the nation votes, such as the presidential election, the opinion poll results are crucial. In elections where only a minority of activists vote the opinion polling results are unimportant. The primaries are activist elections and despite all attempts to reduce uncertainty and randomness by the opinion polling companies (e.g. by methods mentioned above), the randomness and uncertainty still remain. This is due to the fact, that it is almost impossible to separate the activists from the rest in an opinion poll. For example, in the presidential primaries of 2004 only 7.2% of the Americans voted! The Democratic turnout was 11.4%, the Republican turnout only 6.6%! In these cases straw polling matters more than general opinion polls, since straw polls are conducted in places where only the best-informed and most active voters gather. In straw polls Ron Paul has done extremely well, always placing first or second, once he even made a land sliding victory gaining 65% of the popular support!

4) The opinion polls give out the impression that a candidate needs to gather millions of votes in most states in order to get the party’s presidential nomination. As noted above, with only 7.2% of the Americans voting in the 2004 primaries, this is not the case. For example, in New Hampshire with a population of 1,200,000 the size of the voting age population is around 1,000,000. If 20% of the shire folk would vote (an extremely high number for a presidential primary) 200,000 votes would be cast. Half would be democratic votes. Thus even if Ron Paul would race himself against all the other republican candidates, he would win with just 51,000 votes. And this is the pessimist scenario. Most likely the voting turnout will be around 10% and no other GOP candidate will gather more than 30% of the state’s votes. In this case Ron Paul will win the New Hampshire primary with only 15,000 votes! As the CNHT straw poll shows, Ron Paul already has 200 votes and judging by some videos, there are at least a thousand dedicated Ron Paulians in New Hampshire. How hard can it be for them to gather 14,000 more votes for Dr. Paul? Using the same analogy, in California, the most populous state of the Union with 36,500,000 people, the GOP primary can be won with only 450,000 votes. Ron Paul will be aided further by the fact that five small states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Wyoming and Maine hold their primaries before Super-Tuesday and every single primary victory will give him an election boost. The smaller the state is, the easier it is to gather a grassroots movement that can influence the election result.

In the primary phase of the presidential elections the ingenuity of the Ron Paul campaign will be clearest. All other GOP candidates adhere to some stripe of neoconservatism, which will only attract the support of the old voters (i.e. of those 6.6% of the Republicans that voted in the 2004 presidential primary). The neoconservative message is old and widely hated. Ron Paul provides a culturally conservative, libertarian option with fresh ideas that appeal not only to many old voters, but to thousands of new voters who have never voted in primaries before. He has already succeeded in turning the whole Constitution party, half of the Libertarian party and many, many anti-war Democrats into registered Ron Paul Republicans. Ron Paul is also about to succeed in waking up the elderly Republican voters with the traditional conservative Republican message of life, liberty and property. The neoconservatives cannot beat him. Their individual candidates are all too power hungry to give up the race and join forces under one name in order to defeat Dr. Paul. With the primaries moved closer to each other they have no longer the option to drop out in the middle of the race, meaning that the neoconservative vote will be shattered between a dozen candidates in every, single, state.

The Ron Paul revolution has already succeeded. It has brought a lot of attention to the libertarian ideas of peace and a limited government. It has also put a strain on the mass media, who can no longer deliver any information they want in any manner they please. Just like a real revolution the Ron Paul revolution has become a movement everyone wants to join. The real test for the Ron Paul revolution is not the victory over the GOP nomination, the question is how to win the presidency from a Hillary-Obama ticket, which will undoubtedly be seen as a dream team by the academia, the mass media, the special interest groups, the bureaucrats and the politicians.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/pitkaniemi1.html

Remember in 2005 when McCain cosponsered legislation that would regulate ***** and Freddy’s mortgage buying requirements? Here’s the last paragraph of his announcement:

“I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.” <===this was 2005!

McCain was sounding the alarm bell 3 years ago, but no one was listening.

The full announcement:

http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=c97d478f-f460-4253-b2ec-8d9fbcaff20c&Region_id=&Issue_id=c0a1cd3d-1012-497b-881e-3ecaf836b694

What was Obama doing while McCain was warning us about Freddy and *****? :

"Lehman Brothers’ collapse is traced back to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two big mortgage banks that got a federal bailout a few weeks ago. Freddie and Fannie used huge lobbying budgets and political contributions to keep regulators off their backs. A group called the center for responsive politics keeps track of which politicians get Fannie and Freddie political contributions. The top three U.S. Senators getting big Fannie and Freddie political bucks were democrats and number two is Senator Barack Obama."

In just four short years, Barack Obama has received more campaign money from ***** And Freddy than any other Senator except Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, as reported by The Center for Responsive Politics, seen here at opensecrets:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html

Opensecrets.org is the non-partisan Internet arm of The Center for Responsive Politics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSecrets.org

Republicans have been leery of John McCain, but he got the surge right, back in 2003. Thank God the current administration finally listened to him. Once again, this time with the economy, McCain’s good judgment would have saved our ***** had we listened to him. John McCain blew the whistle on ***** and Freddy back in 2005, while Obama was getting his palm greased by the same group. There’s some good judgment you can believe in!

Ron Paul fans:
I agree with Ron on economic issues. He called for the elimination of the Federal Reserve and the IRS, both of which were enacted by a Democrat named Woodrow Wilson in 1913.
McCain's economic policies are so much closer to Ron Paul's (also a Republican) and the Libertarian Party's than Obama's, I hope you will consider voting for McCain. Just this time. We are in a place where the direction we take next could spell disaster if the wrong guy gets in office. America needs your vote to count towards the next president. I may join you in 2012...
Charles K.
Your "storm clouds" analogy is great!
Mind if I use it? )

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/09/is_the_obama_campaign_behind_a_1.asp
Can anyone say BUSTED!
The Main Stream Media will eventually have to report on this.

The Obama campaign has shattered all fund-raising records, raking in $458 million so far, with about half the bounty coming from donors who contribute $200 or less.

Aides say that’s an illustration of a truly democratic campaign. To critics, though, it can be an invitation for fraud and illegal foreign cash because donors giving individual sums of $200 or less don’t have to be publicly reported.

Consider the cases of Obama donors “Doodad Pro” of Nunda, N.Y., who gave $17,130, and “Good Will” of Austin, Texas, who gave more than $11,000—both in excess of the $2,300-per-person federal limit. In two recent letters to the Obama campaign, Federal Election Commission auditors flagged those (and other) donors and informed the campaign that the sums had to be returned. Neither name had ever been publicly reported because both individuals made online donations in $10 and $25 increments.

“Good Will” listed his employer as “Loving” and his occupation as “You,” while supplying as his address 1015 Norwood Park Boulevard, which is shared by the Austin nonprofit Goodwill Industries. Suzanha Burmeister, marketing director for Goodwill, said the group had “no clue” who the donor was. She added, however, that the group had received five puzzling thank-you letters from the Obama campaign this year, prompting it to send the campaign an e-mail in September pointing out the apparent fraudulent use of its name.

“Doodad Pro” listed no occupation or employer; the contributor’s listed address is shared by Lloyd and Lynn’s Liquor Store in Nunda. “I have never heard of such an individual,” says Diane Beardsley, who works at the store and is the mother of one of the owners. “Nobody at this store has that much money to contribute.” (She added that a Doodad’s Boutique, located next door, had closed a year ago, before the donations were made.)

http://www.newsweek.com/id/162403

good references? trying to hard to be funny or actually made you chuckle? Do you want to read on? Should this be 2 different paragraphs? Your input is greatly appreciated.

Don’t let my questions fool you; I promise you will be entertained:

September the 28th, 2008: Obama ‘08 is released, made available to anyone with an iPhone™ or iPod® touch1 ; this application can also be found on Facebook. Tell me, what do all these things have in common? I’ll give you a hint, it has to do with age. Well, they can all be found in the pockets of college students across the country. That’s right, in case you haven’t heard, Facebook now fits in your pocket and it’s time to Rock the Vote. Now as the ninja-turtle, single-Mtv generation who grew alongside the internet, we turn to our gadgets for advice. And who is there with open arms promoting a optimistic message of adaptation and variation? Ladies and gentlemen, please silence your cellphones and mute your Myspace and let me introduce to you a good friend of Joe Anyman–or staunch critic, depending on how you look at it–the man who may lead us out of this monetary downturn, whose use of technology would surprise even Bob Dole. Some have called his plans “class warfare” and claimed he refuses to “repudiate those remarks”7. Remember, no matter who wins, this election has already shattered a few glass ceilings. But Barack Obama has by far the freshest, most current version of a Presidential Campaign, and his enthusiasm may prove to be more contagious than any viral marketing; by capturing the youth vote and spreading his roots far and wide across the Great Plains, Obama stands to not just make, but also shape, history.