Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Dear Bill and Ri–

Well–the national GOP has apparently switched tactics this year–in 2004, the windshields of cars outside St. Joe’s Cathedral in Manchester had 3 separate GOP flyers on pre-Election Sunday! 

This year, NH GOP true-believers can’t even fill up a meeting with Laura Bush but the national party is rolling in money–so this year’s last-minute stunt is 300,000 deceptive robo-calls coming in from Virginia.

The call starts off on an upbeat note–“I’m calling with some information about Paul Hodes….”, giving the impression that the Hodes campaign is sending out robo-calls, three or four in a day to the same household, some coming as early as 5 o’clock in the morning. Irate letters to the Concord Monitor say, “I’m voting for Bass because Hodes is making these robo-calls.” 

Only Hodes isn’t making those robo-calls–the National Republican Congressional Committee is.  If you listen all the way to the end of the robocall, which nobody does because we’re all sick of them–well, read the Concord Monitor story for more: 
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061105/REPOSITORY/611050397

Still, I had a wonderful time today, up in NH, despite the naked windshields of churchgoers’ cars. There was frost in the morning, sunshine at noon, and takeout burritos from my favorite restaurant (Shorty’s in Manchester) to take home to Frank. I visited Manchester, Concord, and Nashua–met lots of energetic and pumped-up Democrats of many ages, saw two Republican headquarters closed up and shuttered. 

But no windshield flyers, so I just hope that the many kind people who went out to look on my behalf had as many other consolations as I did. Now let’s get big media onto  those 300,000 deceptive robocalls!

xxxx
Betsy

Why didn’t I guess–this year’s last-minute deception is illegal phone-calls with a new twist on deception. Says Eric Moskowitz of the Concord Monitor: A letter-writer to the Monitor said she had been “bombarded by recorded election messages from [Democratic candidate] Paul Hodes.” Marilyn Jewell of Concord wrote that she would be sure to vote for [his Republican opponent Charlie] Bass, in part because “he doesn’t pester me to death.” What’s wrong with this picture? Hodes isn’t pummeling voters with repeated robocalls–Republicans are.

But it sure does sound that way, for the first ten seconds (“Hello, I’m calling with information about Paul Hodes…”) Hang up the phone? That’s fine with the robocallers, because they’ll call you back, again and again and again.

And NH isn’t the only place where this is happening.

• Here’s a recording from Illinois of three robocalls to the same answering machine: “Hello, I’m calling with information about Tammy Duckworth…”
• In Connecticut, these phone calls start coming as early as 5 a.m.
• At DailyKos, SB Woodside, tracking the national story, lists 15 races where this is going on.
• Also tracking the story, Talking Points Memo links to another robocall recording, this one from New York.

So where is our national media on this national story?

Too slow to catch up with this brand-new voter suppression tactic, at least until well after Tuesday’s election.

“The calls are designed to make you hang up right after the words ‘Paul Hodes,”‘ says Hodes campaign spokesman Reid Cherlin.

* OK, it’s a nasty trick, but is it illegal? Well, shouldn’t it be? FCC regulations provide that all prerecorded messages must “at the beginning of the message, state clearly the identity of the business, individual, or other entity that is responsible for initiating the call.” [47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(b)]

Hello, “real media”–could you please cover this story?

p.s. Many thanks to Dave Winer, David Weinberger, Jeff Jarvis, Frank Paynter, and Elaine of Kalilily for your support on the the last-minute-deception story!

Update: I just got recordings of two NH robocalls.

Last-minute mailer from NH Republicans Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Today is Sunday. On Sunday, millions of Americans gather in churches to celebrate their sense of wonder at the universe, their allegiance to tradition, and their hope for a future more just than the world around them. On the last Sunday before Election Day, Republican operatives go out in force with a last-minute message to stick under windshield wipers. And mainstream media is too slow, too divided, to report on what people are being told. But those “secret messages” won’t be secret if you and I take the time to make them public. I’m headed to spend my morning in church parking lots, photographing those last-minute leafletters and their leaflets. And whatever I find, I’ll put up on Flickr and tag it “Election2006” so that others can see it too. Please join me–email me your photos if you don’t have a way to post them yourself–we have a voice now, so let’s use it–join me!

p.s. That picture is a last-minute mailer from the NH Republican State Committee. Thanks to D Fowle of the NH Gazette for posting that photo and inspiring my quest!

p.p.s. I’m up in NH — photos when I get home. The news here is that real NH Republican voters are too turned off to turn out for leafletting church parking lots–yay, NH! I knew people in my state had a lot of sense.

In the absence of actual volunteers, anyone willing to go door-to-door with GOP leaflets are allegedly getting $100 bucks for their troubles. And, in the absence of actual volunteers, the National Republican Congressional Committee has turned to 300,000 robocalls to NH, hitting some voters three or four times a day with calls that sound as if the Democrats made them.

Democrats have protested to the US Attorney that these calls are targetting even people on the national don’t call list–that’s illegal in NH. The NRCC says that calls will continue because NH law “does not apply” to calls made form out of state.

You’ve just got to love those Republican family values.

Peaceful freedom on a field of blue

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Look at that peaceful bird, riding his tropical breeze toward the island of home.

Dear reader, I thank you for your patience with the occasional outages here at this blog. I pledge to keep bringing you stuff that I think you’ll enjoy–sometimes wonderful wonders, like this chance image from the Galapagos when I went swimming with seals.

And other times, political stuff like the truly ugly photo I’m about to post next, so please forgive me!

NBC’s Hardball talked phone-jamming with disgraced GOP phone-jammer Allen Raymond. A partial transcript, posted at MediaMatters:

NBC’s LISA MYERS: In an exclusive interview, Raymond admits that, four years ago, he went beyond pushing the envelope and actually crossed the line. He spent three months in prison. Now, in a civil suit, Democrats are trying to tie his misdeeds to the White House.

It all happened during a hard-fought battle for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire between then-Democratic Governor Jean Shaheen and Republican John Sununu. Raymond was running a telemarketing firm. He says an old friend from the Republican National Committee, James Tobin, came to him with an idea: use nonstop hang-up calls to tie up Democratic phone lines on Election Day.

So, you were trying to create chaos and keep Democrats from getting out their vote?

RAYMOND: That’s right. We were trying to create chaos and prevent the Democratic Party from operating efficiently.

MYERS: On Election Day, the plan worked until nervous state Republicans pulled the plug. And the Republican candidate won, though there’s no evidence that phone jamming made the difference.

How common are dirty tricks in both Republican and Democratic politics?

RAYMOND: I think they’re fairly common, but let’s be clear on something. New Hampshire phone jamming was not a dirty trick; it was criminal.

Raymond understands the distinction, but does NBC?

Apparently not.

The frame story for NBC was that Republicans and Democrats are equally dirty.

Uh huh. So here we have a Republican felony reaching high enough that, after consulting the White House, the Republican National Committee spent $3 million and counting for high-priced defense lawyers. And here we have an unsupported statement that Democrats also engage in dirty tricks.

In our major media, that’s what passes for balance.

NBC’s Hardball talked phone-jamming with Allen Raymond. A partial transcript, posted at MediaMatters:

NBC’s LISA MYERS: In an exclusive interview, Raymond admits that, four years ago, he went beyond pushing the envelope and actually crossed the line. He spent three months in prison. Now, in a civil suit, Democrats are trying to tie his misdeeds to the White House.

It all happened during a hard-fought battle for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire between then-Democratic Governor Jean Shaheen and Republican John Sununu. Raymond was running a telemarketing firm. He says an old friend from the Republican National Committee, James Tobin, came to him with an idea: use nonstop hang-up calls to tie up Democratic phone lines on Election Day.

So, you were trying to create chaos and keep Democrats from getting out their vote?

RAYMOND: That’s right. We were trying to create chaos and prevent the Democratic Party from operating efficiently.

MYERS: On Election Day, the plan worked until nervous state Republicans pulled the plug. And the Republican candidate won, though there’s no evidence that phone jamming made the difference.

How common are dirty tricks in both Republican and Democratic politics?

RAYMOND: I think they’re fairly common, but let’s be clear on something. New Hampshire phone jamming was not a dirty trick; it was criminal.

Lovely and mysterious photo shows tender blue sky with crescent moon and crescent Venus.

(Thanks to Tingilinde for the link! )

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science…

It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man…”

Albert Einstein

The little boy on the right grew up to be José Raúl Capablanca–playboy, celebrity, and (computers now tell us) the best chess player our planet ever saw, says ChessBase News. How do you compare chessplayers who never played against one another? Matej Guid and Ivan Bratko used the open-source program Crafty to analyze games played over the course of more than 100 years by 14 World Champions. They scored players move-by-move, comparing each move played against the “best” move Crafty could find with a search depth of up to 12 “plies.” (Read their scholarly article for the whole story.)

It’s a fascinating example of the way scientists crack problems that most people assumed would forever remain undecidable.

My thanks to Frank Wilczek for emailing me this story!

The World Chess Network has lots more photos and stories from Capablanca’s life.

Found poetry, from the Yahoo Time-Capsule project, New Orleans schoolteacher’s message to the future:

In related news, some born-again atheists are out crusading against all the rival dogmas competing with theirs.

I’m skeptical about the existence of God, but I’m way more skeptical about evangelizing a worldwide monoculture of all the ideas most cleverly put forward on this exact Friday morning in October.

My own sincere religious belief is that Ms. Vinny is doing much more good on this needy planet.