Obama Campaign Encouraging Supporters To Donate In Republicans’ Names

This is being done under the pretense of encouraging left-wing merry pranksters to goof on “a Republican in their lives”. Keith Koffler of White House Dossier reported:

The Obama presidential campaign is launching an effort to collect Republican email addresses by inviting its supporters to submit information about their Republican associates to the Obama 2012 website.

***

From the Obama website:

Who inspires you to give?

This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life by letting them know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign.

Simply enter their name and email address below. Then, we’ll send them a message letting them know they inspired you to donate.

Thank you for supporting this campaign, and happy holidays.

Important: By making a donation today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to have dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama. By clicking on the “Submit” button below or otherwise participating in the promotion, you agree to be bound by these Official Rules and represent that you satisfy all of the eligibility requirements.

The effort is being supported by emails from the campaign to members of the vast Obama 2012 email list urging them to participate.

One message, from Deputy Campaign Manager Julianna Smoot, also invites donors to buy something from the Obama 2012 store for their Republican friend.

Really want to fire up your GOP friends? Buy them a gift from the 2012 store. I recommend the birther mugs — they get the message across pretty well.

Okay –  what message are they trying to get across? That they’re total, classless douchebags? Not only the Obama Camp, but the drones who would, instead of taking a break from politics, take this bait, and use the holidays to make the Republicans in their lives sick to their stomachs? (Not kidding. If I got an email like that from the White House I would feel like vomiting). Who thought up this vile idea, and did the President himself, really sign off on it?

Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, responded in an email to Politico 44 to Koffler’s post:

“The tin foil hat can be taken off — these email addresses are not stored.”

I’m beyond caring what the regime does with our emails.  Scores of conservatives have already turned themselves in at Attackwatch. What are they going to do?

But I do care that the President of the United States thinks it’s cute to cause fellow Americans distress at Christmastime by inspiring supporters to donate to his reelection campaign in their names, putting them on the WH spam list.. It’s not cute, and it’s not funny. Family members will fight and friendships will be lost over this. What person in their right mind would do something like this to someone they like? Wouldn’t it have to be someone they don’t like? So the Obama camp is purposefully egging on their followers’ basest instincts to hurt people during the holidays?

Whatever – it’s purposely divisive and it will cause additional stress to many people who already are feeling stressed out this holiday season.

Have we ever seen anything like this at this level of politics, before?

MORE:

A former Obama supporter comments at White House Dossier:

allen December 14, 2011 at 10:38 am

I received an email from barackobama.com suggesting I give to the campaign and then provoke my conservative friends by telling them I gave it in their honor. Talk about goading people into anger. Does he want to deepen the division between the parties and ensure we have the same conflict in our social lives? #confusedformersupporter

Exactly what he’s doing.

I suspect this commenter is a lawyer:

Rob December 14, 2011 at 3:49 pm

It’s certainly in a very gray legal area. It’s one thing to get names off of voter rolls. It’s quite another to ask people to sign up others without their consent. Yes, people send e-cards to each other through on-line services so I suspect that would be the argument here. However, intent is commonly invoked in the interpretation of the law and the intent here is spelled out quite clearly: “[H]ave a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life…”

They’re basically advocating harassment by signing up people to receive something they didn’t consent to. Orwellian concerns aside, this form of incitement by the administration is beyond the pale.

A few more:

Dave December 14, 2011 at 10:46 am

A dark time in America. I’ll be glad when it’s over.

***

Any of my Democrat “Friends” sign me up to get email from the Obozo and I’ll sign them up for a porn susbscription, militia subscription, (and the list will go on) in a heartbeat.

Yep. I’m keeping that in mind if it happens to me.

Why is it that everything this administration does vis-a-vis the internet always comes across as creepy and disturbing?

Actually – vis-a-vis everything this administration does creeps me out.

UPDATE:

Did we not say creepy? Yes – and  a Republican congressman adds tricksy, too:

The Hill: Republican says it’s ‘creepy’ Obama campaign requesting GOP email addresses:

A House Republican thinks it’s a little “creepy” that President Obama’s reelection campaign is offering donors a chance to enter the email addresses of Republican friends.

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) tweeted Wednesday: “Obama campaign asking for donors to give them GOP email addresses. Tricky, yes. Creepy, definitely.”

***

Ben LaBolt, the Obama campaign’s press secretary, tweeted later on Wednesday that “the email addresses are not stored.”

In response to the controversy, he referred to popular paranormal crime-solving TV show “The X-Files,” tweeting: “The tin foil hats can be retired, and Mulder and Scully can stand down.”

Okay everybody needs to “stand down” on this lest they be ridiculed by Obama’s press hacks. {{{{tinfoil-hat birthers}}}}

Because it’s perfectly normal for a President of the United States to turn its citizens against each other. Nothing to see here.

RELATED CREEPINESS:

Via Weasel Zippers: Obama Campaign Secretly Data Mining Voters: “Microlistening”…

The Obama campaign is guarding the details of the operation like the political equivalent of nuclear secrets: “I’ll be happy to discuss what we’re doing after we do it,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political strategist.

Gosh, that’s a lot like Nancy Pelosi’s, “we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”

“The things we did in 2008 in many ways were prehistoric by contemporary standards,” Axelrod said at a Dec. 7 Bloomberg View lunch. “There’s a lot you can do in the way of more finely targeting voters so they’re getting information that’s useful to them.”

If this means an end to Axelrod’s insufferable astroturfers that would be a blessing.

Micro Campaign

St. Clair and his team are creating tools to connect with people properly. For example, disenchanted voters are wooed, not hit up for money. They call it microlistening.

Other hints can be gleaned from an Obama campaign job posting that Gage, now consulting for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, took note of last spring recruiting “quantitative analysts.”

“The Obama for America analytics department analyzes the campaign’s data to guide election strategy and develop quantitative, actionable insights that drive our decision- making,” it says. “We are a multidisciplinary team of statisticians, mathematicians, software developers, general analysts and organizers — all striving for a single goal: re- electing President Obama.”

All striving to fool and manipulate because that’s all he has going for him – the ignorance of the masses.

SEE ALSO:

The American Thinker: Democrats Follow Obama Down the Low Road:

Obama was advised to scare people about Social Security, make them think Republicans are greedy, evil, moronic, “you’re on your own” extremists.   The liberal media and pundits are working overtime on the same message.  They are thrilled that Obama has changed the topic from the need to lower government spending to the unfairness of income inequality.  Of course, Obama promises Democrats that he will raise taxes on only Other People, the undeserving millionaires and billionaires.  No one has to do anything hard — the millionaires and billionaires will pay for it all.  Nothing has to be cut.  Nothing has to change.

I can’t help but smile as I write this.  Obama’s ploy is so childish, even ridiculous — and yet it works!  I heard each and every talking point coming out of my liberal friends’ mouths.  This is the power of leadership.  My smile doesn’t last.  It hurt me to see a friend’s love for her handicapped child abused, turned into gut-wrenching fear of Republicans — and then to see her gentle face all blurry and distorted with anger, a few inches from mine, as she yells into my face that Republicans want to abandon her child because we’re not willing to pay taxes.  In that moment, the potential violence of the OWS crowd became chillingly real.

We are getting toxic leadership from this White House.  Obama doesn’t have the power to destroy my old friendship.  But he does have the power to destroy our country.  Only Democrats can stop him.

Linked by Michelle Malkin, and Jim Geraghty, thanks!

Video: Piers Corbyn: Global Warming “Delusional Nonsense” Lobby About To Collapse

The Canadian government announced on Monday that it was formally withdrawing from the Kyoto protocol on climate change, a move it had telegraphed for weeks.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

Canada’s Environment Minister Peter Kent made the announcement, just hours after returning from United Nations-sponsored climate-change talks in Durban, South Africa. At that meeting, delegates from almost 200 countries agreed to draft a new global emissions treaty by 2015.

Even before heading to Durban, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper had said Canada would not make a second commitment to the Kyoto treaty, under which the former Liberal government in 1997 pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels. Kent said the Kyoto pact was a relic of the past, and was futile in combating climate change because it didn’t incorporate the three major emitting countries of China, India and the U.S.

“It is now clear that Kyoto is not the path forward for a global solution to climate change. If anything, it is an impediment,” Kent told reporters at a media conference in front of the Canadian legislature. “This decision formalizes what we have said–that we would not implement the Kyoto protocol.”

Meteorologist, astrophysicist, consultant, and owner of the business Weather Action, Piers Corbyn, was interviewed on Russia TV, and said he hoped that Canada’s move would herald the complete collapse of the global warming lobby, calling it “delusional nonsense founded on fraud”:

Canada’s Environment  Minister noted he wouldn’t “be surprised” if other countries follow in Canada’s footsteps in pulling from Kyoto.

SEE ALSO:

Weekly Standard: Climategate (Part II):

Before anyone had time to get very far into this vast archive, the climate campaigners were ready with their critical review: Nothing worth seeing here. Out of context! Cherry picking! “This is just trivia, it’s a diversion,” climate researcher Joel Smith told Politico. On the other side, Anthony Watts, proprietor of the invaluable WattsUpWithThat.com skeptic website, had the kind of memorable line fit for a movie poster. With a hat tip to the famous Seinfeld episode, Watts wrote: “They’re real, and they’re spectacular!” An extended review of this massive new cache will take months and could easily require a book-length treatment. But reading even a few dozen of the newly leaked emails makes clear that Watts and other longtime critics of the climate cabal are going to be vindicated.

How inconvenient.

Scandal Plagued, Ethically Challenged Attorney General Voices Opposition To Voter Integrity Laws In Austin Speech (Updated with Video)

You have to understand – something a normal person would associate with a honest,  healthy, sound government – voter integrity laws – an  ethically challenged Marxist like Eric Holder views like a vampire views garlic – a  gag inducing menace, to be avoided at all costs.

J Christian Adams was in Austin with True The Vote to protest Holder’s speech, tonight.

J Christian Adams via @KonniBurton on Twitter

Tonight I spoke in Austin, Texas at a rally organized by True the Vote.  It took place on the grounds of the LBJ library on the campus of the University of Texas.  The rally was in response to Eric Holder’s announcement at the same place two hours later of a concerted Justice Department effort to oppose virtually every electoral integrity measure promoted by Constitutional conservatives and Republicans.

Holder’s announcement will have profound partisan results in the 2012 election because of his professed unwillingness to enforce laws to prevent voter fraud.  Indeed, tonight he made clear his opposition to these laws, such as voter ID and even the requirement to register to vote in advance of an election.

Holder announced broad opposition to voter identification requirements and a ramped up effort to enforce voting registration laws in welfare agencies.  He didn’t make any announcements about enforcing Section 8 of Motor Voter to ensure dead people don’t populate the roles.  He also said that voter fraud “isn’t a huge problem,” perhaps marking the first time the nation’s chief law enforcement downplayed criminal behavior.  Of course that is in vogue in this administration, starting with the New Black Panther dismissal and now with Fast and Furious.

In opposition to Holder, I spoke, as did a group of inspiring patriots starting with Catherine Englebrecht of True the Vote.  Anita Moncrief, Reverend C. L. Bryan, George Rodriguez (head of the San Antonio Tea Party) and Adryana Boybe, National Director of VOCES Action followed.   Boybe’s speech defending Texas Voter ID may be the first time I heard the policy defended in Spanish.  Moncrief, though, had the line of the night – that “Al Sharpton has a platinum race card.”

Holder laid down markers which will excite his base and disturb law abiding citizens.  He supported restrictions on political speech which will criminalize campaign falsehoods.  He vowed hyper-scrutiny of voter integrity laws such as voter ID and vowed to run states like Texas through a nasty gauntlet on redistricting.  If this doesn’t send a signal to Texas and South Carolina to pull their Voter ID laws out of Justice and go to court, nothing else will.  Also in attendance was Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez, a staring character in my book Injustice.

Holder brought along his puppy, Charlie Savage of the New York Times, from whom we can expect glowing sycophantic coverage of Holder’s announcement at any minute at the New York Times website.  Savage is the same reporter who covered purported politicization at the Bush Justice Department.  For this he won a Pulitzer Prize.

Since his site is currently experiencing technical difficulties, I hope Mike Vanderboegh doesn’t mind me borrowing the picture he prefers to use for said pup…

John Hinderaker of Powerline has been keeping a watchful eye on the Obama administration’s recent  efforts in consort  with far-left organizations (including CPUSA) to demonize and frustrate the states’ efforts to protect ballot integrity by preventing voter fraud. See his posts here and here for background.

Reporting on Holder’s speech, Hinderaker calls Holder’s announcement, his “Voter Fraud Program”:

Tonight, the Obama administration put its cards on the table when Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech on “voting rights” at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas. The text of Holder’s remarks is here.

There was, of course, a certain irony in Holder’s choice of a site for his speech. Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965–Holder’s intended reference–but he is also associated with voter fraud. It is universally acknowledged, I believe, that Johnson stole his first Senate election in 1948, and voter fraud carried out under his expert guidance in 1960 helped Kennedy carry Texas. So Holder’s placing himself in the tradition of Lyndon Johnson invokes an ambiguous heritage, at best.

Continue reading his analysis of the speech.

Hinderaker concludes:

The Obama administration needs all the votes it can get, given its unpopularity with the American people. The question is, will the administration get those votes by persuading legitimate, eligible voters, or will it try to make up the deficit by enabling the casting of millions of fraudulent votes by Democratic Party activists? At the moment, it looks as though the latter is the Obama administration’s chosen course.

Some may think this assessment is too harsh. Some may say that the Democrats just want everyone under the Sun to vote; that they may be misguided, goofy liberals, but they just want everyone to participate. How do we know that this perspective is false? Because there is, in fact, one constituency whose votes have been systematically excluded in recent years. They are members of the military. And the Obama administration has actively collaborated in suppressing the military vote–even though many members of the military are minorities–because it doesn’t favor Democrats. The Obama administration, in particular its Department of Justice, is hopelessly corrupt.

Sure it sounds harsh, but everything this administration does is harsh – the sooner people understand it, the better.  I hope Republicans are up for this fight.

One Texas Republican is putting his foot down: John Cornyn warns Attorney General Holder not to mess with Texas voter ID law:

Texas Sen. John Cornyn sent a clear message to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder this afternoon: Don’t mess with Texas’ voter identification law.

“Voter identification laws are constitutional and necessary to prevent fraud at the ballot box,” Cornyn said.

***

“Facing an election challenge next year, this administration has chosen to target efforts by the states to protect the democratic process,” Cornyn said. “They would do well instead to focus on job creation, the economy, and reducing our national debt.”

SEE ALSO:

Doug Ross: Holder Justice Department to Begin Investigating …Voter ID Laws:

Although it would seem — curiously! — that the New Black Panthers have once again escaped scrutiny.

As usual, Ross cuts to the chase:

This is all part of the Obama administration’s plan to erode the integrity of the ballot box, Chicago-style, prior to the 2012 election.

Actions like this, along with his direction of “Operation Fast and Furious” and his stonewalling of the Kagan health care memos, highlight the need for the House Judiciary Committe to begin impeachment proceedings against Eric Holder.

The most lawless attorney general in American history needs to be held to account.

RELATED:

John Ransom, Townhall: Eric Holder Impeached is a Good First Start:

Some of us hicks out here in the countryside, in flyover country clinging to our guns and our religion, are starting to get the idea that mistakes aren’t just being made by the administration, but rather that mistakes are being manufactured- and then ignored by Congress.

At MF Golbal, at ATF, at Justice, at the Federal Reserve Bank, at Solyndra, the answer’s always the same: “Oops. We made a mistake.”

And they don’t just make one mistake; they make a series of mistakes… and then it’s time to cue up a two-week Obama vacation.

They are mistaken in their reaction when evidence first comes forward of wrongdoing; they are mistaken in their statements they make under oath; they are mistaken when they mistakenly answer a question that they mistakenly answered mistakenly in the first place in front of Congress.

They are so mistaken in what they mean and what they say they mean that everything is suddenly dependent on the legal definition of the word “is.”

Call it the Clinton defense, the best legal novelty invented since the insanity plea. But of course the Clinton defense only works for government workers. The rest of us have to face the plain, ordinary law.

And make no mistake: You know those paranoid people who think that Obama and his cronies are purposefully crashing the system from within to serve a political agenda where no crisis goes to waste?

They have a pretty darn good point now at the Department of Justice.

And the longer these “mistakes” are allowed to happen with no remission, no trial, no perp walk, the clearer the picture becomes even without the most transparent administration in the history of the Nobel Prize.

UPDATE:

Parts 1 and 3 of Holder’s speech at the LBJ Library in Austin. (part 2 is not up yet, for some reason):

Part 1

Part 3

There’s a Q and A  session with moderator, Mark Updegrove, Director of LBJ Library, which you can find at YouTube if your interested in a drawn out discussion of “voter rights” since the sixties.

I’m not sure what is so complicated. If you’re a United States citizen, you have the right to vote. It’s incumbent upon every citizen who wants to participate in our democratic process, to register. When you vote, you should be able to prove you are who you say you are. And you should only be allowed to vote once. No dead people. No Mickey Mouse and Donald Ducks. You should also be smart enough to know that if someone calls you to say election day is next Thursday, they’re pulling your leg.

Linked by Doug Ross and Michelle Malkin, thanks!