For Candidates, Web Is Power And Poison

Washington Post: Clinton, In Particular, Draws Equal Parts Cash And Vitriol

(Washingtonpost.com)  This story was written by Jose Antonio Vargas.

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Candidates use the Internet to generate buzz, draw grass-roots support and raise record amounts of money. But in the intense, round-the-clock world of online presidential campaigning, the good comes with the bad.

"The pool of negativity is much bigger, and it spreads virally," said Mindy Finn, chief online strategist for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's Republican presidential campaign. "The Web can be hateful."

Just ask Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Sites such as StopHerNow.com and AgainstHillary.com, funded by conservatives who have followed her political career since the 1990s, are easily searchable on Google. Unflattering online videos, including the "mash-up" page that portrayed the Democratic front-runner as an Orwellian Big Brother, are heavily viewed on YouTube. And Facebook, the online sociopolitical hub of the moment, is the unofficial capital of anti-Clinton country: One group, Stop Hillary Clinton, has more than half a million members, compared with the nearly 51,000 who have signed up as supporters on her Facebook profile. It's the largest group on Facebook against a candidate.

In many ways, the Web is more effective than television advertising and direct mail, the traditional methods campaigns and independent groups have used to try to define their opponents, political analysts say. It's cheaper, and it spreads information more quickly. But so far, anyway, its potential for affecting a presidential campaign is relatively untested.

"Imagine if the Swift Boat group posted their ad on YouTube before airing it on TV," said Victor Kamber, author of "Poison Politics: Are Negative Campaigns Destroying Democracy?" "With the enthusiasm that these campaigns are drawing right now, it'll be easy to find supporters who can spread whatever they want to spread -- and make sure that their fingertips are not on it."

Kamber was referring to the TV ads aimed at discrediting Sen. John F. Kerry's war record four years ago. Relatively few of the ads actually ran, but they were frequently rebroadcast on news and cable shows. On the Web, the ads had relatively little impact -- after all, YouTube, which popularized video sharing, wasn't born until February 2005.

On sites such as YouTube, humor, originality and, most of all, creativity are rewarded, setting a relatively high bar for getting noticed but opening up the possibilities of poking fun at opponents -- or possibly smearing them -- to virtually anyone.

"The key, of course, is coming up with material that's funny, racy and special enough to capture people's attention," Kamber said.

Online negative campaigning dates back at least to 2000 and the e-mail chains that attacked Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Vice President Al Gore. But there are far more weapons today. "You have to go multimedia when you're attacking now," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a longtime campaign expert who has studied negative ads. "Send an e-mail, embed a YouTube video, send a link to your site. It's much more sophisticated."

On the Web the technology is relatively simple, and it can be difficult to trace a blog or a video. Though Romney's campaign was linked to a site attacking former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), it was quickly taken down, and the bulk of attacks so far have been launched by amateurs, who are usually able to remain anonymous.

"Campaigns have no control on what's already out there and what will get out there," said Joe Rospars, new-media director for the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

The devastating impact last year of the "macaca" video on the Senate reelection campaign of George Allen (R-Va.) illustrated the kind of nightmare a candidate could face online. So far in 2007, the best example of a successful viral attack has been the March video targeting Clinton, inspired by an iconic 1984 Apple Computer commercial.

It casts the former first lady as the droning voice of totalitarianism, and it's one of many homemade YouTube videos ("Hillary Clinton Is Satan," "10 Things I Hate About Liberty, Starring Hillary Clinton") attacking her. A few days after the "1984"-themed anti-Clinton video was uploaded on YouTube, it was blogged, linked to and, weeks later, picked up by news organizations. It's been viewed more than 3.8 million times.

Phil de Vellis, who posted it anonymously before being identified by bloggers, came up with the idea while sitting in his Washington apartment. Its purpose, he said, was as clear as its title: "Vote Different." De Vellis was working for a Web design firm hired by the Obama campaign at the time, but he insists that he produced the video on his own.

"The video is effective because it says something that a lot of people, a lot of Democrats, are thinking but weren't saying. It hit a nerve," said de Vellis, 34, a lifelong Democrat who now works for a media company advising candidate Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor.

[trueprophet]

WHAT''S RON PAUL''S MESSAGE?
The main thing Ron Paul''s campaign has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters like me who feel unrepresented by the Fascisct (globalist Republicans) and their Socialist comrades in crime (globalist Democrats). They''re actually one and the same. It''s all a phony, poorly staged left-right paradigm. Most people, though, are too distracted, dumbed-down, or outright brainwashed by mainstream media, which endlessly regurgitates scientifically-crafted streams of information aimed at keeping their eyes closed to the realities of the world around them, that they fail to recognize this. Those currently in power, and those being groomed to take [major] political power, are preselected by the "global elite," and whomever is eventually elected, will ultimately, serve their will, and not ours. People on the right and those on the left have many differences. Maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers and anger are of a considerable magnitude. No matter what happens in 2008, I personally believe Ron Paul will influence the national conversation about what the role of the federal government is, how much power the government should have over our lives and how much liberty we should give up for security. These are issues that, frankly, no one else is talking about as seriously and sincerely as Ron Paul. What''s for sure is that his growing army of supporters like me will be a force to be reckoned with in 2008.

[trueprophet]

HOPE FOR AMERICA: PRESIDENT RON PAUL

-- No more meddling in other country''s political affairs
-- No more aggressive military actions overseas
-- No more torture prisons
-- No more pseudo-wars like the "War on Drugs"
-- No more IRS and unconstitutional income taxes
-- No more Federal Reserve (the group of private banks which owns our government)
-- No more U.N. (one world government) participation
-- No more NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO or GATT
-- No more North American Union
-- No more federal gun control laws
-- No more illegal aliens pouring-in over our country''s borders
-- No more illegal aliens allowed to roam freely in our streets
-- No more federal Laws which are not authorized by The Constitution
-- No more federal erosion of State sovereignty
-- No more unlimited federal government

They don''t call him "Dr. No" for no reason. The Doctor is in! Join us in this 21st Century political revolution at ronpaul2008.com

"Liberty, when it takes root, is a plant of rapid growth."
- George Washington

"Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must...undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine

"Ron Paul doesn''t represent your Father''s school of political thought. He represents your Founding Fathers."
- Me

[trueprophet]

HOPE FOR AMERICA: PRESIDENT RON PAUL

-- No more meddling in other country''s political affairs
-- No more aggressive military actions overseas
-- No more torture prisons
-- No more pseudo-wars like the "War on Drugs"
-- No more IRS and unconstitutional income taxes
-- No more Federal Reserve (the group of private banks which owns our government)
-- No more U.N. (one world government) participation
-- No more NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO or GATT
-- No more North American Union
-- No more federal gun control laws
-- No more illegal aliens pouring-in over our country''s borders
-- No more illegal aliens allowed to roam freely in our streets
-- No more federal Laws which are not authorized by The Constitution
-- No more federal erosion of State sovereignty
-- No more unlimited federal government

They don''t call him "Dr. No" for no reason. The Doctor is in! Join us in this 21st Century political revolution at ronpaul2008.com

"Liberty, when it takes root, is a plant of rapid growth."
- George Washington

"Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must...undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine

"Ron Paul doesn''t represent your Father''s school of political thought. He represents your Founding Fathers."
- Me

[trueprophet]

RON PAUL IS THE NEW WAY
What we need is a President who will show us the way. Not the old way. Not the same way, but a new way. Think about this for a minute. What if we pulled all of our troops out of South Korea? They''ve been there for 50+ years. What if we quit worrying about Iran, but instead, realized that its having a nuclear weapon will not mean the end of the world? What if we pulled all of our troops out of the Middle-East, and brought them all home? What if we realistically addressed the National Debt, and paid attention to REALLY DOING SOMETHING about stopping illegal immigration? These are the ideas of Presidential candidate, Ron Paul. He''s a ten term Congressman and a physician who has delivered over 4,000 babies. He''s an intellectual who''s published four books, three of which are devoted entirely to sound economics and one to foreign policy. He was raised on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania as a pious Lutheran, but now he attends a Baptist church. Paul is given to mulling things over morally. Whenever he recollects the helicopter pilots he treated as an Air Force Flight Surgeon (Captain) during the Vietnam War, a war which he now says was "totally unnecessary and illegal," he laments, "They were gung-ho. I''ve often thought about how many of those people never came back." Candidates with the high level of personal integrity and proven track record of adherence to The Constitution, Congressman Paul has always demonstrated only come around once in a lifetime, if we''re lucky.

[trueprophet]

RON PAUL WILL PRESERVE U.S. SOVEREIGNTY
All of the trade deals and world government organizations, which all of the presidential candidates support (except Ron Paul), such as the ICC, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA, are all a major threat to our nation''s sovereignty. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites. The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a prescription to take herbs and vitamins. The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws to meet their needs, and not our own. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs. The NAFTA superhighway, being built by a Spanish company, is just one part of a plan to erase our borders and create the North American Union, a single nation State like the EU, out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new, unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under the NAU scheme. There won''t be any borders anymore, or a free America. Our limited, constitutional government will be gone forever. Let''s not forget the UN either. It wants to impose a direct Carbon Tax on us. Ron Paul successfully fought this move in Congress last year, but if we are going to stop ongoing attempts of this world government body to rule over us, we need someone in the White House who knows how to say "No." We must withdraw from any organizations or treaty that infringes upon our nation''s sovereignty.

[trueprophet]

HOPE FOR AMERICA: PRESIDENT RON PAUL

-- No more meddling in other country''s political affairs
-- No more aggressive military actions overseas
-- No more torture prisons
-- No more pseudo-wars like the "War on Drugs"
-- No more IRS and unconstitutional income taxes
-- No more Federal Reserve (the group of private banks which owns our government)
-- No more U.N. (one world government) participation
-- No more NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO or GATT
-- No more North American Union
-- No more federal gun control laws
-- No more illegal aliens pouring-in over our country''s borders
-- No more illegal aliens allowed to roam freely in our streets
-- No more federal Laws which are not authorized by The Constitution
-- No more federal erosion of State sovereignty
-- No more all-powerful (Orwellian) federal government

They don''t call him "Dr. No" for no reason. The Doctor is in! Join us in this 21st Century political revolution at ronpaul2008.com

"Liberty, when it takes root, is a plant of rapid growth."
- George Washington

"Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must...undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi

[gunownerdan]

Ron Paul is #1 on the internet!
Youtube viewers can choose to subscribe to their favorite candidate''s Youtube page for updates on their latest videos.
Dr. Ron Paul has more subscribers in Youtube than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and John McCain COMBINED.

Candidate / Number of Subscribers as of Nov. 8, 2007:
Obama = 12,384
Clinton = 6,661
Edwards = 4,437
Biden = 1,483
Romney = 3,231
Giuliani = 2,645
McCain = 1,740
Thompson = 760

TOTAL = 33,341

Dr. Ron Paul = 35,855

This is no accident or typo, Dr. Ron Paul really is #1 on the internet! Why? Because the internet is not controlled by a small handfull of huge corporations, it''s controlled by WE THE PEOPLE.
You won''t hear this from the mainstream media, but peace and liberty are very popular!
ronpaul2008.com

[trueprophet]

My fellow Americans just don''t seem to care that our nation, along with The Constitution upon which it was founded, is being flushed-down the NWO toilet by our nations'' bought and paid for politicians and media. While the Oligarchs warn and incite fear in the sheeple about the prospect of terrorism, they at the same time leave our border wide open, and fund and conduct illegal wars overseas that do nothing but incite the terrorism which their Orwellian Laws like the Patriot Act and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act pretend to protect us from. Wake up America! It''s not about protecting you from terrorism, or saving the planet from Global Warming, or any of that other fear-mongering garbage the sold-out, mainstream media feeds you 24/7. It''s about feeding the bankers and the military industrial complex, and facilitating the global elite''s ability to ratchet-down control over the American people, placing us into a total control grid where they can surveille, track and control everywhere we go and everything we do. It''s the groundwork for totalitarianism. It''s the New World Order plan of Bush, Clinton, Edwards, McCain, Giuliani, et.al., being executed quite beautifully. You''re a frog in a pot. In order to cook a frog, you don''t throw him into a pot of boiling water. If you do, he''ll resist and jump-out. What you do instead is, you turn the heat-up REAL SLOW, and by the time the water is boiling he won''t be able to jump out anymore, because it''s too late--he''s already doomed.

[trueprophet]

Sadly, even though Clinton voted for the war in Iraq, and a host of Laws aimed at removing your liberties, so many Democrats are blinded by her cult of personality that I predict they will overwhelmingly vote to put her crime family back into office. While I''ve made some progress in educating Liberals as to the phony staged consensus of the left-right paradigm, the fact remains that a majority of Democrats still see the White House as some kind of political Super Bowl, where the success of their "team" is the be all and end all - to the expense of America as a whole. The Punch and Judy show theater that was the "troop surge" debate in the Senate characterizes Hillary''s role in hoodwinking Americans perfectly. The debate is framed as not whether the U.S. should get out of the Middle-East altogether, but the relative minutia of whether to feed thousands of more troops into the meat grinder or not. Clinton''s Campaign Manager recently compared Hillary to Margaret Thatcher, which translates as more war, more dead Americans, and a further desecration of the tattered shreds of what''s left of our Constitution. Clinton is the ultimate global elitist and represents the Democrats supposed base, the poor and downtrodden, about as much as Lindsay Lohan represents grace and dignity. I''m sure she informed the likes of David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix as to her presidential aspirations during her last visit to attend the Bilderberg conference. Vote for a REAL AMERICAN. Vote for Ron Paul.

[trueprophet]

All of these trade deals and world governmental organizations that all of the presidential candidates support (except Ron Paul), such as the ICC, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA, are all major threat to our nation''s sovereignty. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites. The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a prescription to take herbs and vitamins. The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws to meet their needs, and not our own. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs. The NAFTA superhighway, which is currently being built, is just one part of a plan to erase our borders and create the North American Union, a single nation State like the EU, out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new, unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under the NAU scheme. There won''t be any borders anymore, or a free America. Our limited, constitutional government, will be gone forever. Let''s not forget the UN either. It wants to impose a direct Carbon Tax on us. Ron Paul successfully fought this move in Congress last year, but if we are going to stop ongoing attempts of this world government body to rule over us, we need someone in the White House who knows how to say "No." We must withdraw from any organizations or treaty that infringes upon our nation''s sovereignty. Vote AMERICA FIRST! Vote for Ron Paul.

[trueprophet]

What we need is a President who will show us the way. Not the old way. Not the same way, but a NEW WAY. Think about this for a minute. What if we pulled all of our troops out of South Korea? They''ve been there for 50+ years. What if we quit worrying about Iran, but instead, realized that its having a nuclear weapon will not mean the end of the world? What if we pulled all of our troops out of the Middle-East, and brought them all home? What if we realistically addressed the National Debt, and paid attention to REALLY DOING SOMETHING about stopping illegal immigration? These are the ideas of Republican Presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul. He''s a ten term Congressman and a physician who has delivered over 4,000 babies. He''s an intellectual who''s published four books, three of which are devoted entirely to sound economics and one to foreign policy. He was raised on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania as a pious Lutheran, but now he attends a Baptist church. Paul is given to mulling things over morally. Whenever he recollects the helicopter pilots he treated as an Air Force Flight Surgeon (Captain) during the Vietnam War, a war which he now says was "totally unnecessary and illegal," he laments, "They were gung-ho. I''ve often thought about how many of those people never came back." Candidates with the high level of personal integrity and proven track record of adherence to The Constitution, Congressman Paul has always demonstrated only come around once in a lifetime, if we''re lucky.

[trueprophet]

What we need is a President who will show us the way. Not the old way. Not the same way, but a NEW WAY. Think about this for a minute. What if we pulled all of our troops out of South Korea? They''ve been there for 50+ years. What if we quit worrying about Iran, but instead, realized that its having a nuclear weapon will not mean the end of the world? What if we pulled all of our troops out of the Middle-East, and brought them all home? What if we realistically addressed the National Debt, and paid attention to REALLY DOING SOMETHING about stopping illegal immigration? These are the ideas of Republican Presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul. He''s a ten term Congressman and a physician who has delivered over 4,000 babies. He''s an intellectual who''s published four books, three of which are devoted entirely to sound economics and one to foreign policy. He was raised on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania as a pious Lutheran, but now he attends a Baptist church. Paul is given to mulling things over morally. Whenever he recollects the helicopter pilots he treated as an Air Force Flight Surgeon (Captain) during the Vietnam War, a war which he now says was "totally unnecessary and illegal," he laments, "They were gung-ho. I''ve often thought about how many of those people never came back." Candidates with the high level of personal integrity and proven track record of adherence to The Constitution, Congressman Paul has always demonstrated only come around once in a lifetime, if we''re lucky.

[gunownerdan]

RON PAUL 2008
* Constitutional Government *
* Lower Taxes *
* Free Markets *
* Civil Liberties *

U. S. Congressman Ron Paul(R-Texas) is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation''s capitol.
He has consistently voted against the USA PATRIOT Act, the Real ID Act, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Iraq War.
Ron Paul has won MSNBC, ABCNews.com, and C-SPAN polls, and has nearly as many YouTube subscribers as all other candidates combined!
For more information:
www.RonPaul2008.com
Search YouTube for "Ron Paul".
www.MySpace.com/ronpaul2008

[gunownerdan]

"Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control. Our Founders, having just expelled the British army, knew that the right to bear arms serves as the guardian of every other right. This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun control debate. Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government."
-- Congressman Ron Paul, June 26, 2006

"To disarm the people is the most effective way to enslave them."
-- George Mason

"The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi..."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

"Tyrants mistrust the people, hence they deprive them of arms."
-- Aristotle(384-322 B.C.)

www.a-human-right.com

[gunownerdan]

Bill and Hillary Clinton are both members of the CFR(Council on Foreign Relations) just like Bush, Cheney, Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, McCain, Edwards, Obama, Biden, and Richardson(just to name a few).
The CFR has hijacked the foreign policy of both parties and their main goal is to destroy American sovereignty and our constitution leading to the formation of a North American Union with Canada and Mexico.
The dollar is now being destroyed so it will be much easier to accept the new "Amero" which is planned to replace the dollar.
Dr. Ron Paul is NOT a member of the CFR and he is the only anti-war and pro-liberty candidate running for president.
ronpaul2008.com

[bennyblack1]

The sad part is, everyone can see it, and no one will do anything about it. People are too busy trying to profit.

[bennyblack1]

Well, I for one, support the negative campaign against Bill and Hillary Clinton. They both are card carrying Communists. America was founded upon free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom to bear arms, for police to have a warrant before entering your place of living (a BIG violation that apartment landlords do), the right to not testify against yourself, for Army personnel to not just take up residence in your home for a stake out...etc etc etc, and Congress....has the right to wage war and to stop war. Now, from what I have seen, Hillary Clinton and her supporters (including Wild Bill), are gaining political support of mobsters IN OTHER COUNTRIES. In other words, like NYC Prophet said, America has already LOST its sovereignty, and martial law is the only thing left to implement by a highly elite group of people, specifically, the Aluminati, a world wide governmental group of bankers that controls the money, hence world events.

[howcould]

Nigggers..

[howcould]

Sharpton is a piece''a ******** shyyt.

[howcould]

They''re a buncha ******* skkkanks. Who base their ******* worth on controversy. Who rely on it.. A textbook ******* republican liberal dependency on the way things were. They''re whhhores... who rely on welfare.