But wherever he goes, he is always Joe Biden.
Source: youtube.com
Source: youtube.com
Source: youtube.com
Source: youtube.com
The firm likely behind the texts, ccAdvertising, makes a practice of sending emails in the form of text messages to cell phones. The “question is open in front of the Commission,” says the FCC.
A screenshot uploaded to Twitter Tuesday night of an anti-Obama text message.
Via: @jimspellmancnn
A slew of anti-Obama text messages sent Tuesday night appear to be linked to ccAdvertising, a Virginia-based firm specializing in telephone surveys and what the company calls "email-to-text technology."
That method — which sends emails to cell phones in the form of SMS messages — allowed the firm to deliver unsolicited texts from domains such as gopmessangers.com and informedett.com, all the while skirting existing Federal Communications Commission regulations.
A spokesperson for the FCC directed BuzzFeed to Section 227 of the Telecommunications Act, which prohibits both voice and text calls to wireless numbers "if the call is not made for an emergency purpose or with the prior express consent of the called party." This September, the FCC also released an enforcement advisory specific to political robocalls and text messages.
But because the messages sent Tuesday night were delivered from website domain names — sent to cell phones as emails, not traditional SMS messages — the texts fall outside current FCC regulations.
The FCC spokesperson told BuzzFeed that, for now, the "question is open in front of the Commission."
Revolution Messaging — a liberal mobile communications firm whose client list includes the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and giant labor union SEIU — filed a petition for declaratory ruling in January requesting clarification on whether internet-to-phone text messages are covered by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The firm argues in the petition that "exempting internet-to-phone text messaging technology from the TCPA would result in severely weakening consumer rights."
"The sending of unsolicited political text messages is likely to increase exponentially during the 2012 election cycle," reads the petition. "Those firms engaging in this practice will be encouraged to send such messages to the hundreds of millions of potential voters in the 2012 presidential election."
In response to the petition, the FCC's Consumer Bureau issued a public notice for comment — a procedure requiring the FCC to seek the public's comment on an issue before considering adopting or modifying rules. Final comments on the Revolution Messaging petition are due Dec. 10, 2012.
Until then, unsolicited internet-to-phone text messaging remains legal for firms like ccAdvertising, which was named by Revolution Messaging as a firm that regularly "engages in this practice" and has "already sent millions of these unsolicited texts."
As noted Wednesday morning by the DailyKos, GoDaddy listed Jason Flanary — an employee at ccAdvertising and a former Republican candidate for Virginia state senate — as the registrant for the websites behind the anti-Obama texts.
But later Wednesday afternoon, the registration information had been modified. Flanary's name and contact information was replaced with a listing for a "G. Joseph" — likely Gabriel S. Joseph III, president of ccAdvertising. The new listing also includes an email address, clearertechnology@gmail.com, once affiliated with a website called 20noObama12.com, according to the email address's listing on ipaddressden.com.
Although the texts sent Tuesday night did not appear to be affiliated with the Romney campaign or Republican Party, ccAdvertising was paid for "survey research" by Romney during his first bid for the presidency four years ago. FEC filings show the campaign made a one-time payment of $53,755 to the firm on Aug. 9, 2007.
When asked for comment, ccAdvertising did not explicitly take responsibility for the Tuesday night text messages, but Joseph did insist that his firm was in compliance with all FCC regulations.
"ccAdvertising has scrupulously complied with all laws and regulations affecting its activities," Joseph told BuzzFeed in an emailed statement. "It appears that statements currently being made about ccAdvertising may be largely motivated by partisan political considerations."
Joseph added: "We find it interesting that on a day when up to $50 million in television advertising is being transmitted in the battleground states that new media technologies such as that being discussed in the press are getting so much attention."
Less chest-thumping, more math. “This is a very tight race that’s very far from being decided,” says Newhouse.
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and senior advisor Ed Gillespie (L) talk on the campaign plane before taking off from Miami, Florida October 31, 2012.
Image by Brian Snyder / Reuters
In a press conference call Wednesday afternoon, senior Romney campaign officials fired off a rat-a-tat of early voting statistics and polling figures to prove victory was still comfortably within reach — if not quite inevitable.
“This is a very tight race that’s very far from being decided,” said campaign pollster Neil Newhouse, summarizing the campaign's message.
The favorable metrics they cited — some of them legitimate, others less so — added up to a relatively persuasive case that the election indeed remains too close to call. But that argument is a long ways from the chest-thumping bravado the campaign has been projecting over the past month.
On the stump, Romney has grown fond of eliciting loud applause from his crowds by saying "If I become president," and then correcting himself, "No, when I become president..."
But if the cautiously optimistic tone of the call was any indication, Romney's senior staff in Boston remain very much on the "if" side of the scenario.
Most national polls remain tied, or show Romney ahead, but polls in the key battlegrounds of Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire continue to give the incumbent a stubborn, if slight, edge.
But Newhouse pointed out that in Ohio, for instance, Romney has maintained a solid lead among independent voters in 20 of the 26 state polls released in October. Barring a massive Democratic turnout similar to 2008, he argued, the state will go to the candidate who's winning independents — and that appears to be Romney.
Senior strategist Russ Schrieffer also noted that Obama has continued to poll below 50 percent in most state and national surveys, suggesting that undecided voters will break for the challenger. He also noted that Romney favorability rating is now roughly similar to Obama's — a dramatic upswing since last month.
"This is a change election," said Schrieffer. "Let's not kid ourselves. Voters are looking for change. They are not happy with the way things have gone over the last four years... and Governor Romney is the change candidate."
“It’s unacceptable to launch these types of despicable attacks from dark corners,” a Human Rights Campaign spokesman said about the Federal Communications Commission complaint filing.
Via: @cyrsucker
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Human Rights Campaign Wednesday called on federal authorities to launch an investigation into a Republican leaning telecommunications company at the heart of an anti-Obama text message controversy, charging the company had defrauded cellphone users who had received the messages.
Following a series of anti-Obama text messages received on Tuesday night — some of which addressed the president's record on LGBT issues — HRC, the nation's largest LGBT political group, asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the company,
The company, ccAdvertising, has not admitted to sending the messages. But the dummy sites used to send the messages were registered to company executives.
Additionally, one of those executives — Gabe Joseph — is known for using questionable tactics, according to Republican operatives familiar with his past activities.
BuzzFeed has reported that the "email-to-text technology" apparently employed by the sender of the messages — which sends emails to cell phones in the form of SMS messages — allowed the firm to deliver unsolicited texts from web domains rather than phone numbers, all the while skirting existing Federal Communications Commission regulations.
Although there are rules against sending unsolicited, traditional SMS messages, because they were technically emails, they fall outside current FCC regulations. An FCC spokesperson told BuzzFeed that, for now, the "question is open in front of the Commission."
HRC's complaint, however, appears to go further than that. The letter from HRC general counsel Robert Falk identifies two potential violations of the law that the national LGBT rights organization claims should be investigated. In addition to the claim that would appear to have been foreclosed by the current open question on the email-to-text technology, HRC also argues:
[T]he [Telephone Consumer Protection Act] prohibits any person within the United States to use a telecommunications service “to cause any caller identification service to knowingly transmit misleading caller-identification information with the intent to defraud [or] cause harm.” 47 U.S.C. § 227(e)(1). By disguising the sender of the text messages as “SMS@Aicett.Com,” ccAdvertising knowingly and willfully caused the caller-identification service to transmit misleading caller-identification information in an attempt to defraud and harm gay-rights advocates.
Falk goes on to note, "Each violation of this provision is punishable by a penalty up to $10,000 per violation, up to a total of $1,000,000."
In a statement, HRC vice president of communications Fred Sainz said, “It’s unsurprising that our opponents are employing such underhanded tactics and trying to attack equality from behind shrouds of secrecy. HRC is filing a complaint with the FCC so that these types of organizations know there are consequences for their actions. It’s unacceptable to launch these types of despicable attacks from dark corners, and it’s incredibly irresponsible to send out unsolicited messages to people who have no desire to receive this type of vitriol.”
A message was left with the person who answered the phone at ccAdvertising seeking comment on the HRC complaint.
Support for Todd Akin. A source says the decision comes as Missouri polls tighten.
Image by Charlie Riedel / AP
A SuperPAC closely connected to Sen. Rand Paul is jumping into the Missouri Senate race, hoping to use a six-figure ad buy to swing the election in favor of Rep. Todd Akin, a source close to Paul said Wednesday evening.
According to this source, America's Liberty PAC is jumping into Akin's campaign against Sen. Claire McCaskill — despite his controversial statements about rape and abortion.
The source said that the last-minute ad buy in support of embattled Republican candidate Todd Akin is happening now because the polls in Missouri are becoming closer.
After Sandy, Obama surrounds himself in the trappings of the office. The bomber jacket, the plane, and the presidential seal.
President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail Thursday morning with a rally in Green Bay, WI, fresh off touring the damage of Hurricane Sandy, and did all he could to bring that aura of popular presidential leadership back to the campaign trail.
Surrounding himself in the trappings of the presidency after one of the most clearly "presidential" moments of his time in the White House, Obama made a call for national unity — before pivoting to attacks on his Republican opponent.
"Our hearts go out to those who have lost their loved ones," Obama said at the airport rally after bounding down the steps of Air Force One wearing his official bomber jacket.. "We pledge to help those whose lives have been turned upside down."
Saying that in times of trouble "we see America at its best," Obama took a bipartisan tone.
"All the petty differences that consume us in normal times, all seem to melt away," he said. "There are no Democrats or Republicans during a storm — just fellow Americans."
The campaign chose for Obama to deliver his remarks behind the presidential seal — further heightening the contrast with his Republican opponent who packed boxes for storm relief, but was otherwise relegated to obscurity in the wall-to-wall storm coverage.
But midway through his remarks, Obama moved to attacking Mitt Romney.
“Governor Romney has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up these very same policies that failed our country so badly," Obama said, saying the Republican is trying to cast a return to George W. Bush's policies as change.
Democrat Shelly Adler, who is running against Republican Congressman Jon Runyan for New Jersey's 3rd Congressional District, ran a radio ad in the lead up to Hurricane Sandy equating the storm's potential destruction to her opponent. “She should be embarrassed,” says the Runyan campaign.
Source: youtube.com
Because abortion is “putting more violence on a woman's body.” A new day, and Democrats point to another Republican making the case against abortion in the case of rape.
The comments were made this past weekend at a fund-raising event.
Source: youtu.be
We wanted to know, is there any time that you would agree with abortion?
When a mother's life is in danger, I'm not going to make that decision, you know. I know they go out and — incest is so rare, I mean, it's so rare, but the rape thing...You know, I know a woman who was raped and kept the child, gave it up for adoption, she doesn't regret it. In fact, she's a — she's a big pro-life proponent. But on the rape thing, it's like how does — how does putting more violence onto a woman's body and taking the life of an innocent child that's not — that's a consequence of this crime, how does that make it better? You know what I mean?
Yeah, but she has to live with the consequence of that crime...
Yeah, I know crime has consequences, but how does it make it better by killing a child?
Some critics are calling the recording a setup, pointing to the 10-second mark where there is a clear audio cut. However, it is impossible to tell if it's an edit for time or to take Koster's remarks out of context.
BuzzFeed has reached out the American Bridge 21st Century super PAC about getting the full transcript, but has not heard back from them at this time.
UPDATE! American Bridge 21st Century super PAC communication director Chris Harris responded to say,
We did not record the audio, we used the recording from a group called Fuse Washington.
Their recording does not have the blip ours does, it must've been a glitch in our upload or something. There was no editing of the remarks, as you can tell from listening to Fuse's full clip.
BuzzFeed has since replaced their version with the original.
So, at least, they said in the final days of 2008. So don't mistake bravado for actual knowledge this time.
Limbaugh, host of "The Rush Limbaugh Show," told Newsmax on Oct. 31 that McCain would win Florida, Ohio, and Nevada. Asked if Obama would take the election, Limbaugh said, "No, I don’t see it...I think [Obama has] been dead in the water since the primaries. He is going to need to be up 10 to 12 points to win by 3 or 4.”
Via: newsmax.com
On his old Fox News show, "The Betlway Boys," Fred Branes called it for McCain on Nov. 3, comparing Obama to Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis: "For the electoral vote," said Barnes, "I predict McCain squeaks out a win with 286 electoral votes. Mort gives the nod to Obama in a blowout, 379 to 159. Here are my reasons why I think McCain will win. Number one, doubts about Obama. We still don't know much about him at all. He's run as a guy that's going to brings us together. His senate record is one where he's the most liberal senator and he's one of the most partisan. Number two, we're a center-right country. He's a northern liberal. They usually lose. Remember Walter Mondale, remember John Kerry, Mike Dukakis."
Via: foxnews.com
Morris wrote in Real Clear Politics on Oct. 28 that McCain would win if he picked up undecided votes. "As Obama has oscillated," Morris wrote, "moving somewhat above or somewhat below 50 percent in all the October polls, his election likely hangs in the balance. If he falls short of 50 percent in these circumstances, a majority of the voters can be said to have rejected him. Likely a disproportionate number of the undecideds will vote for McCain." This year, Morris is predicting that Romney will win in a "landslide."
In an Oct. 28 column for Red State, Perrin laid out "seven serious, historic, demographic and other wise culturally compelling reasons" that the McCain ticket was "a lock to win." The first, wrote Perrin, "is the absolute arrogance, elitism, condescending, patronizing and in-your-face voter suppression campaign — don’t vote for McCain, he can not win — being conducted by the national media on Senator Obama’s behalf."
Via: redstate.com
“You know, we already have a Secretary of Business — it's actually called the Secretary of Commerce,” Ryan says in Greeley, Co. The VP nominee slams Obama for not filling the post.
Source: youtube.com
Minnesotans will vote whether to add a ban on same-sex couples' marriage rights to the state constitution on Nov. 6. With that in mind, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken's D.C. and St. Paul offices dressed as rainbows — a symbol of gay pride — to urge a vote against the amendment.
Photos courtesy Sen. Al Franken's Senate office.
This line doesn't look so good in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Source: youtube.com
In a powerful moment at an Ohio rally Thursday, Ann Romney told supports she constantly hears the voices of those who need help “echoing in my head and in my heart,” she said. “The only thing I can tell them is that help is on the way.”
Campaigning today in Ohio, Ann says she told her husband after the his 2008 run that she was “never doing this again.” Romney's response: “You say that after every pregnancy!”
Redistricting and a national election push a House Republican to the center. “The Illinois Democrat.”
WASHINGTON, DC — Illinois Rep. Bobby Schilling may have hitched his wagon to the Tea Party to help power his insurgent Republican campaign for the House in 2010, but as his first reelection bid comes to a close, he’s taking a decidedly different tack, courting Democrats and touting his independent streak.
Indeed, if his latest mailer to voters, framed as an ersatz news publication called The Illinois Democrat, is any indication, capturing the votes of Democrats is a clear priority.
“In this election, many proud Democrats are crossing over to vote for Bobby Schilling,” says the first “article” in the 16-page campaign pitch.
The mailer touts Schilling’s opposition to House Republican leadership during his freshman term in Congress; highlights the fact that was a member of a union; and touts his support for decidedly Democratic issues like transportation and infrastructure spending.
Schilling also pushes his ability to work with Democrats, with “Bobby Schilling — Right in the Middle” in bright purple lettering printed on one page, while at another point the mailer describes him as “Congressman Bobby Schilling — A Voice for Working Families.”
The mailer even includes several pictures of Schilling with local NAACP leaders.
It’s a marked contrast from Schilling’s 2010 election, when he was swept into office as part of the Tea Party wave.
His campaign’s Facebook page from 2009 and 2010 includes repeated entries about his participation in state and local Tea Party rallies, and his wife wrote for a Quincy, Illinois–based Tea Party blog.
The campaign made a point to highlight his support from conservatives, including endorsements from groups like the Illinois Federation for Right to Life and Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Candidates effort.
On policy issues, he leaned heavily on his opposition to climate change legislation then before the House.
And while Schilling is now touting his ability to cross party lines and forge compromises with Democrats, in 2009 he took a decidedly harder position, telling a crowd in Galesville that “I was recruited by my family the day after the presidential election. My daughters were visually upset at the results and asked, ‘What are we going to do?’ I told my wife, Christie, that they were right, I had to do something. It was my time to step up and serve,” according to a local news report.
Schilling’s chief of staff, Terry Schilling, makes no apologies for his father’s decision to tout his Democratic past.
“Bobby Schilling has working class roots,” the younger Schilling said, not that he “has 13 years experience of being a union member — including time as a union steward for the International Paper Workers and as a recording treasurer for the United Food and Commercial Workers. “
And his record during his first term in Congress has been anything but hyper-partisan. Schilling has a 57% rating voting record from the conservative Heritage Foundation, and he supports Davis-Bacon rules governing federal contracts and the hiring of union workers. He’s even been honored by the bipartisan organization No Labels, according to his campaign.
An Illinois Republican described Schilling as a “typical center-right guy,” noting that “on labor issues [he] supports unions but on fiscal issues [he] wants a balanced budget.”
Schilling's shift to the middle is not uncommon this year — from Mitt Romney on down the ticket, Republicans have been moving increasingly away from the Tea Party and ideologically strict conservatives for weeks as they look to tap into pools of independent and conservative Democratic voters.
And for Schilling, the decision makes sense. His district went for Obama with 60% of the vote in 2008; redistricting has meant that nearly 50% of the voters in his district are new — many of them Democrats.
And while Hare was a supporter of Obama, his strong support for the president’s health care reforms had significantly hurt his popularity.
But in Democratic challenger Cheri Bustos, Schilling is facing a much more difficult candidate. National Democrats have hoped his district would swing back to their column this year, and Bustos has strong support from state leaders, including Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who she has known personally for years.
All of that has forced Schilling to make a much more aggressive case for Democrats than he may have had in the past.
“The reason we decided to target Democrats in our district is because the contrast between the two candidates is incredible,” Terry Schilling said.
Outside Richmond, a protester began shouting, “What about climate? That's what caused this monster storm!” The heckler, holding a sign that said “END CLIMATE SILENCE,” was escorted out — as the crowd booed.
Call it pulling a Biden.
Source: youtube.com
Bloomberg cited climate change as a major reason for why he's voting for Barack Obama's reelection.
A return to the politics of climate, just in time for Barack Obama.
Mike Bloomberg knows the power that the leader of a disaster-torn city holds in American politics: Mayor Rudy Giuliani handed the mayoralty off to Bloomberg in 2001 with television ads he cut after the September 11th terror attacks.
And before he endorsed Barack Obama on Thursday, citing Obama's belief in the importance of cutting carbon emissions and the reality of rising oceans brought hom by Hurricane Sandy, Bloomberg had been practicing, in his own way, for a while. Bloomberg has ignored the new political rule that to take political stands on a human tragedy is to "politicize" it, and has repeatedly come out in the wake of mass shootings to demand stiffer gun laws.
Bloomberg endorsed Obama under the headline, "A Vote for a President to Lead on Climate Change." His 17-paragraph op-ed, published by the eponymous news service he owns and the New York Times, does not disguise his generalized disgust for both men and his lack of respect for Obama's leadership skills. Romney, he writes, "would bring valuable business experience to the Oval Office," and he attacks Obama for embracing "a divisive populist agenda focused more on redistributing income than creating it."
But Bloomberg writes that Hurricane Sandy "brought the stakes of Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief. He blasts Romney's reversals on the subject and concludes: "One [candidate] sees climate change as an urgent problem that threatens our planet; one does not. I want our president to place scientific evidence and risk management above electoral politics."
The endorsement may not directly move voters — Bloomberg has always been a figure primarily of the Acela Corridor — but it will dominate what remains of the political conversation around the election, and it offers validation from the same sort of moderate technocratic businessman that Romney is now presenting himself as. Obama certainly worked hard for it: The executive director of the Democratic National Committee, Patrick Gaspard, was in "constant contact" with City Hall, a Democrat told BuzzFeed.
It also turns the New York mayor, who had been searching for a next act, on the leading edge of an issue that Sandy had forced the media and political class, whose attention had wandered to the coal-heavy economies of the Midwest, to consider. Bloomberg's foundation has spent years building a climate initiative, and he has spent heavily on a push to shut down coal-fired plants. If Obama wins, the cause will finally have what it had lacked: a victory, and a political story to tell.
If Sandy pushed climate change back into the conversation, Bloomberg is making sure it's there to stay. “Let's see if [Obama] builds the Keystone pipeline now,” says McKibben.
Image by Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Even if Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Obama endorsement holds little sway over undecided voters in swing states — as some pundits and media types have already argued on Twitter — environmentalists see the endorsement as a crucial turning point in the climate change discussion.
Bloomberg has been a fierce critic of both President Obama and Romney throughout the 2012 election cycle. He told the New York Times last month that he was more likely to agree with Obama than Romney on issues like climate change, but noted that he had not seen enough "action" from the President.
"It's nice to be on the side that I think you should be on," Bloomberg said, "but unless you do something, so what?"
This endorsement may be Bloomberg's call to action. Obama's second term agenda on climate change is unclear, but many environmentalists argue that the federal Environmental Protection Administration could push aggressive carbon regulations even without congressional approval. And if Obama wins re-election, it will make the issue very difficult for him to continue to downplay as he had in his first term, whose key priorities were the economy and health care.
"This is big moment," author and environmentalist Bill McKibben told BuzzFeed. "The president will be swept into office in part because people expect him to do something about climate change. Let's see if he builds the Keystone pipeline now."
Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said the endorsement will the next president — whether Romney or Obama — recognize climate change "as the number one threat to the country."
"I commend Mayor Bloomberg for recognizing the candidate who has done more for clean energy than any other president before him," said Tidwell, "but we all need to do more. The mayor of a city that was hit by an an astounding storm has clearly expressed that view."
Citing the coverage of climate change this week — specifically, Thursday's Bloomberg Businessweek that said, loudly, "It's Global Warming, Stupid" — Kalee Kreider said, "It's a big week on the issue of climate change."
Kreider, a director at Fenton, and a former environmental advisor and communications director to Vice President Al Gore, added that the endorsement "acknowledges that a candidate's position on climate change really is a proxy for leadership."
"Between the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek, the endorsement by Mayor Bloomberg, the inclusion of climate in the TIME cover story on the Superstorm, and other major TV coverage," said Fenton, "it's clear that the lemonade out of the lemon of Sandy is a return to focus on serious issues like climate change in public life."
