Saturday, February 25, 2012

Robo And Real Calls.....The Big Question Now....

ThisIsNotYourFather'sNixon
DirtierTricksVille



"Who Knew What, When?"
Stephen Maher, PostMediaNews
On 'The House" Feb 25, 2012


Now.

I don't know for sure.

But I do know that at least a couple of our readers knew something way back in April of 2011.

How do I know that for sure?

Because, after I wrote a series of posts about Mr. Michael Sona's involvement, together with a very fine online publication called the 'Landmark Report', in a conflaguration that took place at an advance student poll in Guelph Ontario, the following exchange took place in the comment threads:

Anonymous said...Forget about Sona. Check this out. Elections Canada is investigating harassing midnight or early am calls to people in close ridings asking them to vote Liberal. Vote supression strategy directly copied from the states. Seems like the RepubliCON strategists like Lutz imported by cons from the states are pulling every rovian trick in the book in order to ensure a Harper majority.

G West
said...CBC is now reporting that Elections Canada has ruled they are good votes and a valid process...Haven't heard anything further from Sona.

Anonymous said...@Anon3, Yeah the calls are being investigated by EC at the request of the Liberals most of them have been traced to North Dakota...seems like the Republicans have their tea partiers working overtime campaining for the cons.

RossK said...Thanks All.Unfortunately, I just don't see the hard evidence re: the recent calls, robo or otherwise, and where they are actually coming from.It is interesting to note, however, that we out here in Lotusland had some most peculiar phone calling going down late in the 2008 election cycle that targetted a particular left-sided group of voters in the riding of, surprise!, of Mr. Gary Lunn.
7:16 PM, April 20, 2011

Anonymous said...They have been traced to some numbers in North Dakota. This fact has been widely reported. One of the first ridings to recieve these calls was that of Liberal MP Joe Volpe(high percentage of wealthy upper middle class voters and a big con target cuz of the Jewish vote).

RossK said...Thanks Anon.Will follow.

_____________________


Now, a couple of things.

First, as Kady O'Malley also said this morning on 'The House', these stories were out there at the time, but it took Maher and his compatriot from the OCitizen (and BlogCrawl denizen) Glen McGregor to sit down, look at all the stories, and then a whole lot more digging over a period of weeks to see the bigger picture of the systematic efforts to affect the vote in, by Maher's count at the moment, at least 18 ridings.

Second, I did do a little digging at the time, but ran up against this North Dakota area code problem which, apparently, is where phone scammers of all kinds (and not just political) go to be completely anonymous.

Which, I think, begs another question that is not quite, but almost, buried in Mr. Maher's question at the top of the post....

Did somebody, right from the start, know this would come out eventually and, given that, did they, perhaps, make sure they had a pre-packaged, pre-planned limited hang-out all set and ready to whip out when needed?


****

Again.

I, like many others, including, I'm pretty sure, Ms. Malley ("how come his [Mr. Sona's] name was floated by all the usual suspects and conservative sources within five minutes after the story broke?") believe that Mr. Sona is being scapegoated here because, as Mr. Maher also said on the CBC this morning:

"This was not one kid with a robo-dialer"


OK?

_______
More on that London Ontario party for Ann Coulter in March of 2010 and the photos that were taken there to come....

.

6 comments:

Grant G said...

Andrew Coyne..What we do know!

And that is indeed shocking.



http://www.theprovince.com/news/Coyne+Crank+call+scandal+fits+Conservatives+pattern+pattern+political/6206836/story.html

paul said...

As a journalist, it makes me sad to know the story of organized efforts to subvert the democratic process was at least being raised 10 months ago, but not reported until now.
The Coyne piece referenced by Grant G. sets out the importance of this issue. These kinds of activities to subvert democracy are malignant, and unless they are addressed, Canada has become a much different country than the one we thought we lived in. And our duties as citizens have also become much different.

RossK said...

The Coyne piece is, indeed, solid.

And I'll comment on it later.

Thanks Grant

_____

Paul - Does it not make you less sad, however, to see two proMedia journalists be given, based on the initial issues that were raised awhile back, the time and room to really dig and pull this all together?

I really do think that is fantastic, and I applaud them and, presumably, their editors for helping to make it happen.

.

North Van's Grumps said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

http://www.scribd.com/sfharris/d/82589631-Payments-to-RackNine-from-local-Conservative-Campaigns

JW

RossK said...

Thanks JW

.