Morning Briefing
For November 27, 2012
1. A Primer for Rich Donors Who Got Taken to the Cleaners by Republican Consultants
When consultants told rich donors who were funding them that they were not making money off the Super PAC’s that the rich idiots . . . er . . . donors funded, they were being honest. They probably were not.
But ad heavy Super PACs outsourced the ad buys, the mail, the data collection, etc. to other groups that got commissions and you can be sure that a lot of these supposedly noble consultants working for free were making a killing off of commissions, referral fees, etc. through their relationships with the commissioned vendors doing the actual work. Read this old post of mine for a sampling of how these consultants can make money without actually making money.
Just as important as making money for these guys was control over the data. In fact, in singular importance this campaign season has been the buzz word “data.” But what the hell is that data and why is it so important?
Well, for starters, let me fill you in on one piece of technology that flew under the radar this season. It is called Gravity and it is probably the only major piece of campaign technology to come out of 2012 with a proven track record. About the only major donor on the right to have come into contact with it was Joe Ricketts. And Ricketts only came into contact with it because he was smart enough to direct Ending Spending, his group, to work with existing, small groups on the ground. About the only major group to use it was FreedomWorks, which, unlike a lot of other big groups on the right, decided not to go proprietary, but to go for winning at all costs.
It was the existing small groups like American Majority Action and the Madison Project using Gravity primarily and those groups were instrumental in its creation. With the exception of FreedomWorks, virtually everybody else went out to build their own thing. In fact, several of the very well known consultants as seen on TV and others you never see did their best to kill Gravity, stop it from being built, and convince donors who came into contact with it to defund the groups or pressure those groups to move away from Gravity.
Gravity, in fact, explains a lot about how the donors got so screwed in much the same way the RNC screwed itself with Voter Vault.
To understand Gravity, you rich donors need a basic primer. You may think you know this stuff, but I bet you really don’t. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2. The Benghazi-Syria Connection
September 11, 2012, 8:30 PM: U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. All is quiet, Ambassador Chris Stevens has recently finished a meeting with the Turkish consul general.
9:40 – 9:42 PM: Alarms sound, indicating something is wrong. The compound is under attack. A senior State Department security officer at the consulate calls for assistance from the CIA base located less than 1 mile away.
9:59 PM: An unarmed drone is directed to fly over the consulate.
10:20 PM: First officers from CIA’s Global Response Staff arrive at the consulate to assist against attackers.
10:32 PM: National Command Center at the Pentagon notifies the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the attack. Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey are also informed of the situation.
11:00 PM: Panetta and Dempsey meet with President Obama for a previously scheduled meeting and discuss the attack. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
3. Only in Washington
For those of us who are not schooled in the ways of Washington, here is a glimpse into the duplicity of the “budget savings” as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
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