Before I talk about the next step in the Google Bomb project, I want everyone to check out the
Use It Or Lose It campaign. I can only post one diary a day on Dailykos, even though I am trying to help put together two major campaigns right now (note: I am still in favor of the one diary per day rule, despite this). Today, I have decided to post on Google Bombing the Elections, because this campaign should be up and running by tomorrow, with no further need for posts by mid-week
Since it is always good to start off with something funny, check out the rave reviews this campaign is getting from the right-wing blogosphere.
Hot Air writes:
[F]ascinatingly evil... It takes a devious mind to come up with a convoluted way to rig Google search terms, tie that to Google ads and hope to move democracy your way via online hypnosis. What would such a mind do from inside Congress, or the White House?
Well since I will never be running for public office, they needn't worry about that (party office is as far as I will go), although it is nice to know some people out there think of me as potential White House material.
Outside the Beltway writes:
The unscrupulous Chris Bowers has hatched a devious plan to influence the election:
The word "devious" pops up in a lot of these posts. Someone throw the wingnuts a thesaurus. Of course,
as much as the plan as sent tremors through many other blogs as well, as per usual the right-wing response is simply to try and copy the progressive netroots (
click for background information). They say we are evil, and then try and do exactly the same thing. It is a nice reversal of the progressive admiration of the conservative political machine. Right Wing News, for example,
has suggested a counter Google bomb for about half as many campaigns. Don't get too worried: they suck at it, and nearly all of their links are to overtly partisan sites and / or editorials. I am sure they would respond by saying that all of the news reports we are linking to are part of the SCLM, but in this case their inability to understand that some media sources are trusted by a much larger percentage of the public than others will significantly stifle the effectiveness of their response. Still, it shows that we need to move in this campaign quickly, because there are other forces out there working to stop us.
Anyway, after yesterday's
amazing group research produced articles on every target race, I spent a number of hours sifting through the articles and subsequent blog comments. I am very confident in about fifty of the seventy articles that we found, and I am now almost ready to proceed with the Google bomb for those fifty campaigns. I removed about twenty districts from the target list, because I would rather not conduct a Googlebomb than conduct a bad Googlebomb. I removed some districts because we could only find ticky-tack material (in the future, we really need good blogs in those districts to help change what might be a passive local media not producing any hard-hitting stories). Also, in some districts, we could only find strong editorials. I removed those, because that runs counter to the general purpose of the project. In very few cases, I kept partisan media sources or unusual media sources, just because they were so darn good (Raw Story on Heather Wilson, Rolling Stone on Marylin Musgrave). In the end, I think we now have a list of fifty excellent Googlebombs, which I reproduce below.
The purpose of this post, as with
the post I ran last night I MyDD, is to run a final check on the remaining targeted districts. If you see any problems with the fifty remaining potential Googlebombs, say so in the comments. If you have something truly delicious on a district not listed, post that too. I intend to purchase the ads and send out the final Googlebomb code by tomorrow morning. This is our final chance to edit and add. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Here is the current target list:
--AZ-Sen:
Jon Kyl
--AZ-01:
Rick Renzi
--AZ-05:
J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04:
John Doolittle
--CA-11:
Richard Pombo
--CA-50:
Brian Bilbray
--CO-04:
Marylin Musgrave
--CO-05:
Doug Lamborn
--CO-07:
Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04:
Christopher Shays
--FL-13:
Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16:
Joe Negron
--ID-01:
Bill Sali
--IL-06:
Peter Roskam
--IL-10:
Mark Kirk
--IL-14:
Dennis Hastert
--IN-02:
Chris Chocola
--IN-08:
John Hostettler
--IA-01:
Mike Whalen
--KY-03:
Anne Northup
--KY-04:
Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen:
Michael Steele
--MN-01:
Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06:
Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen:
Jim Talent
--MT-Sen:
Conrad Burns
--NV-03:
Jon Porter
--NH-02:
Charlie Bass
--NJ-07:
Mike Ferguson
--NM-01:
Heather Wilson
--NY-03:
Peter King
--NY-20:
John Sweeney
--NY-26:
Tom Reynolds
--NY-29:
Randy Kuhl
--NC-08:
Robin Hayes
--NC-11:
Charles Taylor
--OH-01:
Steve Chabot
--OH-02:
Jean Schmidt
--OH-15:
Deborah Pryce
--OH-18:
Joy Padgett
--PA-04:
Melissa Hart
--PA-07:
Curt Weldon
--PA-08:
Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10:
Don Sherwood
--TN-Sen:
Bob Corker
--VA-Sen:
George Allen
--VA-10:
Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen:
Mike McGavick
--WA-08:
Dave Reichert
Let me know what you think. I have to hurry off to get back to work on
Use It Or Lose It. Also, I would like to give special thanks to the dozens of volunteers form yesterday, and to Lucas O'Conner in particular. To all of you, I hope you know that your patriotism and fighting spirit is what drives the progressive movement everyday.
You rock.
Update: New and / or improved articles have been found for the following districts:
--FL-16:
Joe Negron
--FL-22:
Clay Shaw
--KS-02:
Jim Ryun
--RI-Sen:
Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen:
Bob Corker
--WA-Sen:
Mike McGavick
Keep 'em coming.