How to Win an Election in 18 Easy Steps (Republican Edition):

1. Start by choosing candidates who have failed to win over 50% of the elections they've participated in... even within their own party.
2. Make sure that your candidate's income is so extravagant and secretive that it will be seen as a symbol of their "down home, just like you" personality.
3. Buy the voting machines.
4. Eliminate voting for people who may or may not be "eligible" to vote in our nation's "exclusive democracy".
5. Back up your wishy-washy candidate of last resort with a vice candidate who is best known for a legislative failure regarding the budget.
6. Ignore the media. Tell everyone that all media is against your candidates from the outset and nothing they read from any source will ever be truly true.
7. Make sure that women, gays, blacks, hispanics, religions or other minorities are alienated within the ranks of your party to the greatest degree possible.
8. Promise to stay focused on the economy when America has a bad economy. If that economy should happen to improve on any level, switch focus to "Muslim Terrorists" because that's a perennial winner for our side.
9. Switch your official campaign slogan as often as possible to keep everybody guessing.
10. Kiss up to the Queen of England because she just loves it when people imply that she shares their racist point of view.
11. Ignore the polls - polls are never accurate unless 100% of the respondents are from states whose names begin with the letter K.
12. Have your candidate deny his own religion and make sure that even the only minority to which he is a member is ultimately thrown under the bus in the end.
13. Defend your candidate with an army of has-been celebrities, strippers, porn stars, vegas casino tycoons and racist "reality TV" personalities.
14. Interrupt women at every opportunity and give them the "3rd Wife" treatment.
15. Assume that every veteran and every member of the armed forces is automatically on your side. After all, they take a pledge to uphold the Republican Party, don't they?
16. Do everything your father would be ashamed of you for.
17. Rely most heavily on Fox News as your "think tank" du jour and try not to think about the idea that they will only be successful in the media marketplace if your opponent retains his office and they have a "boogeyman" to sell.
18. When all else fails, which is known to happen as long as there is a black democratic President at the helm of your campaign, rig the machines... This will be easy since you bought the machines in step 3.

~ written by known communist and gay muslim sympathizer, Jarrett Terrill for FloridaSqueezed.com

Republicans: Cookin' Up a Whole New Batch of Crazy!

Democrats shouldn't get too comfy between now and November because the Republicans are cookin' up all kinds of crazy and that always has its consequences for everyone... especially when there's a lot of money behind it.

Here's a brief rundown of the madness:

To refresh yourself on some of the GOP insanity from 2010, click here.

We'll kick off crazy-fest 2012 with our reigning queen of drunken bigotry, Jan Brewer.  Since her mostly failed attempts at Birtherism, immigration deform and hating on gay people, Jan Brewer has taken it upon herself to join her Tea Party fan-base in defining "personhood".  She says that the idea that women can secretly prevent pregnancy from rape is only "a little bit outrageous" and that it's totally up to legislators and voters whether or not they agree.  Brewer has outlawed abortions in Arizona after 20 weeks... making NO EXCEPTIONS for the life/safety of the mother if the doctor doesn't feel like it. It's an outrageous law that is not seeing nearly enough media attention considering that a woman could conceivably die from this in Arizona before the election.

Of course, we can't really discuss fetal personhood without an honorary mention of the grandfather of all screwy looney-toons soundbytes, Todd Akin. By now, you should know all about the idiotic belief system he holds and the statement that stirred the pot. But if you don't watch Rachel Maddow, then you wouldn't know all of THIS.  Akin's coo-coo for cocoa puffs lunacy stems from other pro-lifers with these crazy ideas before him... including a man by the name of John C. Willke. Willke, if you’re curious, endorsed Romney’s 2008 presidential run—a fact Romney freely boasted about at the time. “I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country,” Romney said in a 2007 release, according to the New York Daily News. Even some Florida Republicans have seriously twisted ideas about rape.

Todd akin did not act alone in this insanity, though. Which brings us to your Republican Vice Presidential hopeful, Paul Ryan. “Nobody is proposing to deny birth control to anybody,” said Paul Ryan in a CBS interview where he backed away from every single point in the pro-life agenda. This is a very DRASTIC flip-flop for the congressman. Akins and Ryan had conspired immediately upon Ryan's entrance to the House of Representatives to draft a fetal personhood bill called H.R. 3 which, if it had become law, would have legislatively overturned the Roe Vs. Wade Supreme Court decision and made NO EXCEPTIONS for a woman who is raped or the victim of incest. The Paul Ryan lie that "nobody is proposing to deny birth control" is a BIG LIE indeed, however.  You can read all about these attempts (by Catholic Republicans like Ryan, no less) right here, here and here.

From Paul Ryan on the subject of fetuses, we come to the big guy - Mitt Romney. The "fetal skeletons" in Romney's closet were LITERALLY swept away by his corporation called Stericycle. It was an awful blow to the pro-life movement when they discovered that Mitt Romney had inked the deal for his Bain Capital corporation to purchase Stericycle. It is a company that they had been protesting all the while because it facilitates abortions by removing the "medical waste" and disposing of it properly. I don't need to tell you why pro-lifers have a problem with the term "medical waste". This is just the tip of the iceberg with Romney and Bain though.  The time at which Mitt Romney saw over the acquisition of Stericycle was a time that he said he was NOT in the employ of Bain Capital. Obviously, since the signatures are there, and it was Romney himself conducting this business, he lied.  This is also, conveniently, one of the many years for which Mitt Romney never released his tax returns. But it gets EVEN WORSE for the Presidential hopeful... It turns out that Romney lied yet even once more before all of this about his taxes... and the consequences of this other lie are insurmountable for him in his bid for the Presidency.  Mitt Romney never paid any taxes from an address in Massachusetts.  Why is that important?  Because his eligibility to run for Governor of the State of Massachusetts was entirely predicated on the idea that he had.  Romney had not been a Massachusetts resident for the required seven years. He brushed that concern aside by LYING. He told the people of Masshachsetts that he had paid TAXES in Massachusetts for seven years.  It turns out that everyone just assumed nobody would tell a lie that big... They had apparently never met someone like Mitt Romney before... because he did in fact, lie.

Somebody who's very concerned about how all of this will pan out for Republicans is a man by the name of Bryan Fischer. Fischer is one of those guys that Paul Ryan now claims doesn't exist.  He is totally in agreement with the Akins fantasy about "legitimate rape" not causing pregnancies. He also doesn't want women to have access to contraceptives.  Fischer heads up the American Family Association.  Immediately, you recognize that name because they are the secondary source of all things "anti-gay" in the United States.  The first and foremost source being the hate group known as the Family Research Council. While party leaders were immediately frightened by the onslaught of adverse reactions to Akins' crazy "magic vaginas" story, Fischer was upset with them for reacting to it.  His Twitter account relays: "Akin staying in. GOP elites, by gangtackling Akin instead of having his back, have put this seat in play. Loss is on them."  This is basically like saying that a legislator should not be held accountable for being wrong about something... That even if something is a total fabrication - we'll all be fine as long as we stick with it.

Bryan Fischer draws from the same fanbase as 700 Club Televangelist, Pat Robertson.  Of course, Pat Robertson has the heavy burden of explaining to Christian America what should be done with all the "persons" who will not be aborted when Republican policies take effect... You can apparently do whatever you want with unwanted kids after they're born... as long as you DON'T dare adopt them, says Robertson. No man is going to want to be tied down to the "whole United Nations" which includes "weird" kids of other races "who may have been molested" he says.
Pat Robertson seems to be on a rampage against our nation's young people lately. The religious school that he owns is called Regent University. Of course, it's not a real university because it's a private religious school. The word "regent" means "governing in absense of a higher authority". School boards and county-area branches at all levels of government are often called "regents" or regencies. It has been this way for over 100 years, actually. But you guessed it... Robertson has assembled a crack-team of lawyers to restrict the government from being able to use the term. He is suing local community colleges and non-religious public schools to try to take ownership of the word that he's only been using since 1979.

Speaking of "other races" whose children one should supposedly not adopt, lest they find themselves hosting a United Nations convention in their living room - we would be remiss in not reminding you that the Tea Party Express still has plans to plow over every last brown-skinned American until there are none left.  No man is better suited for this task than white America's favorite skinhead - Joe The Plumber.  Joe has given up the glamorous job of plunging toilets so that he can enjoy Government funded healthcare at taxpayer expense as a United States Congressman. His plan is apparently to shrink the size of Government by adding himself to it.  He is running in Ohio on a platform of "don't spread my wealth" and "let's start shooting at the Mexican Border".  Yes, you read that correctly.  Apparently, Joe is very sensitive about being called a racist by "liberal Obama supporters"... he routinely complains about that on his facebook page, but he just leaves that statement dangling there without apology.  Apparently, if Marco Rubio's parents happened to be anywhere near the border between Mexico and the United States, Congressman Plumber would suggest that border police should shoot at them.  No joke.

Let's not forget that Joe The Plumber was brought to us by the same public relations department in the GOP that delivered Sister Sarah Palin to us.  Palin, if you recall, put shooting targets over a map of Democrats in the United States, including one over the name and location of congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot, almost fatally, yet still luckier than a number of other innocent people at her event.  The mainstream media has failed to mention that Jared Laughner (the shooter in Arizona) listed "Mein Kampf" as his favorite book on his YouTube profile.  He also had a very creepy video he took of himself burning the American Flag in the Arizona Desert.  The media mostly in concert with CNN and Fox News, decided apparently that since Laughner was "crazy", that it somehow ruled out the possibility that he was ALSO an antisemitic white supremacist and gun-nut. Shockingly, violent racists who are connected in any way to Sarah Palin are never held up to scrutiny for their political alliances.

Since Palin has gone national with a lot of support from Fox News and the Oil and Coal lobby - a new Republican has emerged in Wasilla, Alaska.  His name is Mark Ewing... Palin would be so proud of Ewing.  Some of his latest stump speech talking points have included "I love coal. I love the smell of burning coal in the morning." and "We need to educate our children, but there are certain individuals that are just not going to benefit from an education... like kids who have a hard time making their wheelchair move."

Really?  The latest Republican attack will be... against kids in wheelchairs!  That's just made of win, isn't it?

Drunk On Sour Grapes - The Quotable Mitt Romney

Back in March, Mitt Romney got a little taste of political success in Illinois.  It was a mixed blessing, really, because the politics of Illinois (particularly Chicago) have become a dog whistle to Republican operatives seeking to tarnish Obama's reputation in the blogosphere and social media.  While Obama's familial home-base is Hawaii, Republicans have had more than their share of self-induced political misfortune in the Aloha State, leaving them with only Chicago (and sometimes the Republic of Kenya) to alienate in their propaganda.  For some unexplained reason, however, Romney's big win in the Land of Lincoln was short on dignity and long on misfired bravado.  While Romney isn't known as a "guy you could have a beer with", the Huffington Post/AOL reported that Romney slurred his words and stumbled in laps around his perfectly working teleprompter.

That being said, it is not Mitt Romney's inarticulate moment that I want to call your attention to... I want you to notice what Romney had PLANNED to say... what his entire campaign presumed to be fit for the scrolling screen in front of their candidate.  It's no "gaffe" that I'm sounding the alarms on here - it's what the so-called "Believe in America" troupe actually believes about America.  Ironically, it was the following sentiment that Mitt Romney spoke clearly without stuttering:

"I have had many business successes and failures over the years. Each step of the way, I learned something about what it is that makes our American system so powerful.  You can't learn that by teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago."

This is a direct quote from a victory speech that the Romney campaign crafted and Mitt Romney read aloud from a teleprompter after an Illinois Republican Primary win.  Not only is it rather unbecoming of any professional to mar a victory speech with unnecessary character attacks against their eventual opponent, but it's also very telling that Romney and his campaign chose this line of attack to commemorate their small victory in Illinois. Mitt Romney knows that our President's achievements are far greater than his few years spent as a civil rights attorney and college professor.  Although Romney is 15 years older than President Obama, he received his Business Degree from Harvard University where Obama would ultimately become Editor and then President of the esteemed Harvard Law Review.

More egregious than the implied insult and elitist dismissal of both the President and the University of Chicago, is Mitt Romney's contempt for Constitutional Law itself.  In Mitt Romney's world, the almighty dollar makes the world go around and there's no place for "governmental intrusion" in the private sector.  It is this lack of ethics that has led Mr. Romney into trouble throughout his various attempts at political office. He has personally signed his name to the dotted line allowing American jobs to disappear into foreign sweatshops. He has hidden the majority of his income from taxation - ultimately depriving the United States of the only dues he owes to this great country.  He has sought to convert the United States Government into an agency that conducts its affairs with his best financial interests at heart.  He has built his entire campaign for the Presidency with insults and personal criticisms, all the while avoiding the requisite details to explain his own positions on important matters.

These transgressions are not just the mark of a bad politician... They are cowardly and selfish. They are bad for America.  These immoral actions might be "business as usual" to someone like Mitt Romney, but small business owners and employees who pay their taxes and respect the laws founded in our Constitution will not likely adhere to Mitt Romney's myopic view of America as his personal ATM machine.

Mr. Romney never got around to explaining exactly "what it is that makes our American system so powerful". Hopefully, whatever it is, it will be used to help us all in our journeys toward freedom, independence and peace. We know it's already been used for quite the opposite purposes at times.

6 Ways That the Republican War on Women Is a Real War

There are Six Significant Ways That the Republican War on Women (RWoW) is a Real and Dangerous War:

1. Women are dying.
2. Soldiers are on the front lines.
3. Congress declared the war.
4. Propaganda is used to gain public sympathy.
5. Additional funding is sought from the public.
6. Women are questioned as to their allegiances.

Women are dying.

Let it be known far and wide that war kills people. In this case, the casualties are primarily but not limited to women. The first to die in the Republican War on Women (RWOW) are in the lower economic class. Take for instance, 29 year-old Anna Brown, who died in a St. Louis jail cell after being refused treatment at a local hospital and having the police called on her for trespassing. Her story is one of the private sector in healthcare refusing to do for a woman what it is required by law to do. The police of St. Louis made it a crime for Anna to seek medical help. One can only assume that this might happen to men too.

Women around the world (including the United States) die every year due to botched do-it-yourself abortion procedures where medical expertise is not sought. But the shocking truth is that these deaths are not only acknowledged legislatively, but even encouraged. Under the Bush administration and with a Republican-ruled Congress, the Food & Drug Administration considered the effects of a medication that poor women were using to induce abortion at home. Though more than 10 years of research has overwhelmingly shown that Cytotec is a safe way to induce abortion when administered correctly during normal pregnancies, the Food and Drug Administration has never approved this particular use. What the FDA did, in fact, recognize was the drug's use by obstetricians to induce contractions in routine deliveries – a method which they know causes extreme hemorrhaging and risk to both the baby and the mother's lives.

One of the most awe-inspiring discoveries made about the Republican Presidential candidates in the 2012 election so far has been the far reaching grasp they have on the mental health industry under the guise of religion under George W. Bush's “Faith Based Initiatives” program. Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry were all discovered to sit on boards, take ownership of or otherwise run pseudo-healthcare rehabilitation facilities that focus on teenagers and children. A majority of these supposedly “troubled” youths are female and “at risk” for lesbianism or abortion according to their religious “therapists”. At least two of these girls are known to have died under rather ominous circumstances.

Related News: Recent Fire-bombings of Abortion Clinics on Rise Again In Florida and Wisconsin.

A Christian Fundamentalist Holding a Sign
Celebrating the  Murders  of Women at a
Democratic Event in  Arizona.

Soldiers are on the front lines.

On July 28, 2005 a female 'soldier' named Jamie Leigh Jones was stationed in Baghdad by a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (called “KBR” in short) as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. On this day, Jamie Leigh Jones was, according to her and many witnesses (to varying degrees at various stages of the saga that was yet to come), gang-raped and then subsequently locked in a shipping container without access to a phone by her colleagues at KBR.

Three years after her rape (I refuse to use the word “alleged” on principal here), Jones lost her case against KBR and was counter-sued by the military-industrial contractor to the tune of $2million for what they claimed was a “frivolous” lawsuit. (A federal judge did at least dismiss those counter-claims). While the case was lost quietly, in comparison to the swell of outrage that finally led up to it, it is worth noting that none of the defendants were deemed innocent of having sex with Jones. Her case was lost primarily due to insufficient evidence that the sex was not consensual. Photos of the trauma to her vagina, anus, ruptured breast implants and torn pectoral muscles were not-so-mysteriously missing from the evidence collected by her colleagues themselves (the very defendants in the case).

Congress (30 white, male Republican Senators) Declared This War.

Jones' case against KBR (and thereby against the United States, considering the nature of their business), although certainly the most high-profile is not the only rape nor sexual discrimination case against a military-industrial contractor. What came to light in her 3-year struggle to face her attackers in a court of law was the audaciously horrible “mandatory arbitration clause” in her contract with KBR. KBR argued successfully that they had the right to deny Jones the ability to sue them for any reason at all. This contract, which was commonly administered to most contractors at the time, defied the very nature of justice and demanded that all legal disputes, no matter how severe or how outrageous the offense, would be handled “in-house” by the company itself – effectively giving persons wronged by the company NO RECOURSE to defend themselves legally.

One Senator, Democrat Al Franken, from Minnesota, had a serious problem with this injustice and drafted legislation which proposed that the United States stop doing business with companies that required such an egregious erosion of civil liability. When it came time for a vote on the Senate floor, the bill passed with bipartisan support. All were in favor of protecting women from becoming the Jamie Leigh Jones' of the future... Everyone except for the 30 White Male Republican Senators who voted against the measure. One such Senator, shockingly, was John Sidney McCain, whose daughter Meghan is exactly Jones' age.

The outcry and backlash from the public was widespread but short-lived. 30 White Male Republican Senators had essentially voted (albeit unsuccessfully) to legalize rape... Let the War Begin.

Pro-War Propaganda is Issued By Governmental Pundits and The Media

In any war, the real nucleus of the battle is known to be over “the hearts and minds of the people”, as George W. Bush famously noted. For that purpose, political propaganda is employed. There are currently no better propagandists in the world than our Republican party here in the USA. To illustrate this, there are far too many examples to simply list without format. The blogosphere is riddled with senseless arguments ranging from biblical scripture to ad hominem attacks against democratic female legislators and liberals. To provide this point with some citation at least, I've randomly selected a few of the most obvious attempts to culturally re-frame the RWOW as an acceptable and justified movement.

1. A female Republican legislator in Florida blames child rape-victims for dressing “like prostitutes”.
2. Due to pressure from Tea Party astroturfers, Republican legislators in Michigan spend weeks on end and countless public dollars on a law forbidding a kind of abortion that they admit is not even practiced in the state to anyone's knowledge. The procedure that they have incorrectly termed “partial birth abortion” is really called dilation and extraction and is only used by abortion doctors in 1/5 of one percent of all procedures and only when medically necessary.
3. An anti-abortion activist group called LiveAction sets up fake “sting operations” in which they target female employees of Planned Parenthood. Many professional women have their careers ruined by “Brietbart-style” video editing in which the public is falsely led to believe that Planned Parenthood is in cahoots with the perpetrators of human trafficking and sex-slavery.
4. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), and Connie Mack (R-FL) all vote against their own best interests and against the interests of their female constituents by voting against the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2009. Fortunately, thanks to a Democratic Majority and the vote of only ONE Republican woman (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen), the bill passed anyway and now women must be paid equally for doing the exact same job as a man.
5. Florida Representative and amateur pundit Allen West launches a full-scale attack (in writing no less!) against Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz after she dared to call his judgment into question regarding detrimental cuts to Medicare. West sent out public emails that termed his female colleague “the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the US House of Representatives”, “not a lady” and “a coward” who “wants a personal fight” and needs to “shut the heck up”.
6. Georgia's Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss is also a legislator-pundit hybrid who advocates the most extreme measures to deal with the most insignificant of problems. When his office isn't busy sending death threats to gay bloggers, they are advocating legislation which would make it illegal to use your car for the purpose of driving a woman to a clinic known to have performed abortions.
7. Republican blogger and ALEC propagandist Michelle Malkin has given birth to what she calls “the war on conservative women” (her feeble yet not-too-timid attempt at counter-spin) and in a nutshell, this is just a steady stream of tweets (every 5 minutes, depending on the day) on her Twitter account which attack Hilary Rosen, the Democratic pundit who dared to question Ann Romney's fitness as her husband's appointed expert on “Women and the Economy”.

Stay Tuned Tomorrow for 6 Ways That RWOW is a Real War Part II – Funding and Allegiance

Why the Impending Nomination of Romney Is a Special Gift to Social Democrats

Newt Gingrich did what he does best last week. He launched an attack video against Mitt Romney that calls into question his business ethics at this time of high unemployment.

Mitt Romney will be forever tied to the aptly named Bain Capital where he presided over the massive outsourcing of American industrial jobs to foreign nations. The fat-cats over at Bain Capital raked in the dough while American jobs were shipped overseas or dropped altogether.

The only asterisk after this criticism is the idea that Mitt Romney left his CEO position for a short time in order to chair, of all things, the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Of course, he still profited from the jobs-killing Bain Capital during his winter vacation - to the tune of millions - but he was not "on the board" at the time that Newt Gingrich and others have chosen to highlight. Serendipitously, this brief hiatus serves as reminder to the American people of both Romney's "Multi-national" nature and his religion - another sore spot for Romney within his party.

(Can somebody please queue the videos of Mormon overseas adoption scandals?)

Until just now, the word "outsourcing" has been on the no-no list of American political rhetoric. The corporate media, being in cahoots with their advertisers, have agreed to refrain from explaining to the public why the jobs just aren't showing up. Even on MSNBC, you'll rarely hear Rachel Maddow go off any tangents about child labor exploitation in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Liberals have been shouting into a vacuum about the evils of outsourcing for quite some time. Terms like "multinational conglomerate" are dog whistles to the far left. We complain bitterly to our facebook friends about the astronomical cost of our defense operations and blame most of it on the ubiquitous "military industrial complex". It presents a rhetorical question that earns Social Democrats a lot of traction: How can we justify denying people unemployment insurance when we are spending so much money on defense? Furthermore, why is our defense money going overseas? Shouldn't our military or American civilians have those jobs?

The questions raised when the topic of outsourcing is mentioned are ones that Republicans - and some Blue Dog Democrats - find troubling to answer. The unrestrained capitalist process of moving jobs around from nation to nation is great if you are a foreign dictator who needs money for guns and bombs and have plenty of child-age workers to exploit. It's also great if you are a Wall Street tycoon who only cares about the bottom line.

But outsourcing is not so great for the average American worker. Can the Republican Party win an election without working class Americans? They didn't have to answer that question in years past because "jobs" was not nearly the buzz word that it has become in this economy.

2012 is going to be a very different sort of terrain for Republicans. They must now answer to their economic principles or lack thereof. Just a few short years ago, the Tea Party did a fine job of obfuscating these issues by promising an economic solution and then delivering a radical conservative social agenda. That kind of thing doesn't work twice and Mitt Romney is the perfect candidate to clarify that.

Romney is the 'Picture of Dorian Gray' for Republicans. He reminds them that they can encourage their party to follow Ayn Rand's economic mythology and Laissez-faire Capitalism or they can encourage Christian Morality but the two concepts cannot be reconciled without a lot of hypocrisy and disenchantment.

The very best thing that might come of a Mitt Romney nomination by Republicans is the election of a Democratically controlled congress which could easily persuade President Obama to put a legislative cap on the outsourcing of American jobs in his 2nd term.

Say Hello To All Your New Supporters. Now Where's My Check?

Why would Mitt Romney's #1 fan and designer of his largest support network not want anyone to know who he is?


Perhaps, it is because Brian Armstrong of Eagle Mountain, Utah is a paid shill who is acting as an unofficial OPO (online political operative) for the Republican hopeful.


By now, I'm sure you've noticed that Mitt Romney has a website... or maybe you haven't because you wouldn't even want to visit it. That's a problem that many candidates, even the President have faced over the past few years: "How do we drive traffic to our website?" Another question then becomes, how do we get donations from that traffic once we've got them?


Well, back in 2004, the Republican Party expirimented with using OPO's to get the much coveted "youth vote" for George W. Bush. One of the "bad ideas" that most of the OPO's decided not to go for was an angle that's commonly called Associate Marketing? Why is it a bad idea? Because if you are found out and exposed, you show that your candidate only has support that they are paying for - not REAL support.

A key player in this process of bringing Republicans into the internet age was a girl who later went on to head up the internet-related side of many other campaigns including Mitt Romney's 2008 campaign. Her name is Mindy Finn and she most recently was known to have worked on Tim Pawlenty's "crash and burn" campaign... which is sooo not like her. Is she still REALLY working for Mitt Romney with Zach Moffatt? Who knows... There's afterall, no honor among thieves... or in this case, among associate marketers gone political.

So how does it work? There is a 2nd Mitt Romney website that more people enjoy visiting... it is supposed to be like a hub for "tea party-like" "grassroots" supporters that is supposedly NOT paid for by the Romney campaign. This is where the associate marketers mingle with the real supporters and solicit donations from them and "drive their traffic" to the places Mitt Romney (or whoever has hired them) want them to go. Here, it is important to note that Mitt Romney's official facebook page links to the supposedly disconnected "Mitt Romney Central" as though it is in fact, part of the official campaign.

Associate Marketing techniques are a few steps beyond the pale of what voters and people concerned with ethics are willing permit their candidates to get into... It creates a lot of spam, it's mostly anonymous and it just doesn't speak to the idea that the supporters are there for the right reasons.

Creating a political campaign based on paying per click and driving traffic this way and that might seem lucrative to people who never step away from their computers... But there is REAL life outside the matrix that one must eventually contend with. For Mitt Romney, it's going to be devastating to his REAL supporters that most of their "new friends" are being paid handsomely to get cozy with them.

According to one of Armstrong's many, many websites, he explains it this way: "Targeting social groups with your marketing message may be like tight-rope walking. It also may require some nice social engineering where you have an opportunity to talk about your product or service without it coming across as an advertisement or a “pitch”... the overall concept revolves a bit around SEO (search engine optimization 0r "making your site popular via keywords) being a “popularity contest” with backlinks being the votes. Monetizing that traffic [in this case, getting donations] is probably the topic of a different article."

Mr. Armstrong's mistake - the part that really uncovered this mess... was claiming that the "grassroots" site was designed by amateur volunteers and then not giving those people proper credit for their help... It smelled fishy, and boy was it ever... See the "official page" for the "volunteer" who set them up here. Notice anything strange?

Here, you can watch Brian's videos about Associate Marketing.

Here, you can see his obscure and kind of strange blog/webpage where he recruits business.


Now that you know this much, have fun sorting through the rubble... If you know more than I do about associate marketing techniques and political campaigns, please send me an email at floridasqueezed@gmail.com and don't hack me, bro...

If any of my facts are wrong here and I'm barking up the wrong tree, just let me know - I'm a reasonable guy who only wants politicians to be honest about who their support is coming from and under what motivation. I always welcome new information and correct my mistakes where I can. Don't have a cow and think I'm your biggest enemy just because I don't support being shady.