On Countdown,
Keith Olbermann did a 6 or 7 minute segment, with an extended interview with Jonathan Alter.
The topic?
An explicit, detailed and really hard-hitting exposé of the Robo-Call scam, with an added bonus discussing the out-and-out voter suppression tactics in Virginia and elsewhere. The segment is truly an amazing piece of work, and you have GOT to see it!
We (the blogosphere) have done an amazing job in the last 24-36 hours getting this story into the national spotlight.
Here is the email that I sent to Olbermann last night:
Right now, our nation is on the brink of making the first step to recovery from 6 years of madness. The nation is poised to reject, resoundingly, the Republican Party and its corruption, greed, venal blindness, stupidity, criminality, and un-American authoritarianism and slavish devotion to power above all other things.
There is, of course, a hitch. The GOP is desperate, they will do literally ANYTHING to keep their grasp on power, not least because a Democratic Congress would most likely result in a massive wave of arrests, resignations, disgrace and exposure of a huge and disgusting array of petty and grand crimes.
On the eve of the election, the GOP is engaging in a massive wave of automated phone calls. These calls are targetted on Democratic voters, Democratic leaning voters, and undecided voters.
Every single one of these calls is either disgusting and vile, with racism, blatant lies, distortions of the record, and other affronts commonplace, OR, these calls are dirty tricks. They imply with the recorded script that the call is coming from the Democratic Campaign or from a Democratic support outfit. The calls are often repeated multiple times to the same residence, and are often timed early in the morning (like between 5 and 7 am) or at meals. Some have been reported to have been received at midnight.
There are a large number of news stories about this wave of dirty tricks, and most of them can be found here at http://talkingpointsmemo.com/
There are a large number of these stories at the following links:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/...
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
And reports suggest that as many as 53 close house and senate races are being targetted all over the country.
Could you make a point of mentioning this and help get out the word that Democratic Candidates, the DNC, and Democratic support groups are NOT doing this, that these calls are dirty tricks and manipulative spam??
Led by Josh Marshall and his intrepid band of reporters and muckrakers, with big props to a huge number of diarists here, as well as campaign workers and citizen journalists everywhere, we have made a difference.
Not only have we at least made a serious dent in the impact of those calls by getting a reasonably large number of stories into the Corporate Media:
New York Times
Washington Post
But we have also set the stage for a massive round of civil and criminal legal attacks on both the individuals responsible and the institutions and organizations doing the dirty work.
As G2Geek points out, these calls are malicious, they violate numerous regulations, and there are millions of them...
If company records, contract information and business arrangements between the NRCC and the RNC and these telemarketers can be subpoenaed, and the relevant fines applied, the GOP could be in hock to the tune of TENS, perhaps HUNDREDS of millions of dollars.
EXCELLENT WORK, my friends!