Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

Carly Fiorina Launches One Attack Site, Is Target of Another

BY Colin Delany | Wednesday, February 3 2010

Cross-published from Epolitics.com

Death Sheep from FCINO.com

Put this one in the "hoist with her own petard" category: in the same week that Republican gubernatorial senatorial candidate (and former H-P CEO) Carly Fiorina launches an attack site against party rival Tom Campbell ("a.k.a. Taxin' Tom"), state Democrats put her squarely in their cross-hairs with an online hit-job of their own.

Fiorina's FCINO.com ("Fiscal Conservatives In Name Only") takes Campbell to task over the mortal sin of increasing taxes, featuring a very exciting wolf-in-sheep's-clothing video that includes the Robot Sheep Of Doom shown in the image to the right (full video clip below). The site's basically a one-pager, with a brief summary of the charges against the accused along with the clever extra of a "Report a [FCINO] Sighting"] button, of course matched with an equally prominent donations button.

And while the Democrats' anti-Fiorina site plays off her campaign graphics on the visual side, it has even more fun with her name:

Welcome to CarlyFailorina.com. A site devoted to the 19th Worst CEO of All-Time.

Carly Fiorina likes to say that she’ll run things the way she ran her business. And we believe her. As California's next Senator she would undoubtedly run government the way she ran one of our state's biggest companies: right into the ground.

Zang! Of course you can read through the site for a complete listing of Ms. Failorina's shortcomings in detail, and don't forget to submit your own suggestions. The site's more built-out than FCINO.com, but it does have some flaws -- it's way too wide for a lot of monitors (another way in which it mirrors Fiorina's site, BTW), and it buries the social networking buttons on an interior page. But like its Republican-infighting comrade, it's a fun and effective way to make a political attack.

Will either site be seen? These are probably more targeted at journalists, bloggers, political activists and others in the chattering class than at the general public, but who knows how broadly they'll resonate -- if I were in charge of either, I'd be running Google Ads pointing right at 'em.

Want more online negativity? Check out Nancy Scola's review of a new Marc Rubio site that takes on Charlie Crist's Hug of Destiny. But for now, back to the Robot Death Sheep:


Thanks to my new NMS colleague Brian Devine for passing these along.

– cpd

News Briefs

RSS Feed yesterday >

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

Controversial Hoekstra Microsite Targeting Debbie Stabenow Created By The Prosper Group

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra has caused a firestorm in the past 24 hours with a new campaign ad that depicts China as a young woman riding a bike in a rural area speaking in broken English. The thirty second spot aired in Michigan during the Super Bowl on Sunday, and it accuses Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow of aiding ... GO

White House CTO Aneesh Chopra's Exit Interview

On his way out of the White House and back to Virginia, where he is expected to run for public office — but will neither confirm or deny that's the plan — Aneesh Chopra describes the shape of the post he pioneered as the country's first-ever chief technology officer.

As a result of Chopra's interview with The Atlantic's tech/politics correspondent, Nancy Scola, there's now a public record of what this first-ever CTO thinks the CTO's job actually is ("On any topic that is a priority for the president, my role is evaluate how technology, data, and innovation can advance, support, and improve upon those strategies," among other things) and how it might be improved.

GO

friday >

Slovenian ambassador apologizes for signing ACTA, Poland halts ratification

Apparently, some EU countries are reconsidering their support to ACTA, only a week after signing the agreement.
Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenia's ambassador to Japan, has in fact issued a public apology to her country for signing it. Meanwhile, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he's halting the ratification process of the international treaty.
Last week people took the streets in Poland, and a protest is planned in Ljubljana tomorrow. GO

thursday >

Did Newt Gingrich Lose Florida for Want of a Better API?

Slate's Sasha Issenberg has a great story outlining one narrative about Newt Gingrich's loss in Florida: He inspired a group of tech-savvy volunteers, but gave them no way to plug in to the campaign. GO

House GOP Hosts Legislative Data and Transparency Conference

Today, House Republicans are hosting a conference on legislative data and transparency. The goal, as it's been explained to me, is to set the table for a conversation between House leadership and open government/open data advocates about what the House could or should do next.

More information on the conference is here. It's being live streamed.

GO

When House Republicans Aren't Winning With Transparency

House Republicans have been pushing the results of their transparency initiatives, such as a pilot project to archive video of some committee hearings.

But other committee hearings are apparently off-limits. Politico reports today that documentary filmmaker Josh Fox was arrested while attempting to videotape a House Science Committee hearing on hydrofracking. Only credentialed members of the Congressional press corps can film hearings of that committee.

The archived webcast of that hearing, which was streamed live, is here, if you can get the software to work. Each committee chair has discretion over what to do with video of their hearings, although there's also an office of in-House broadcasters who keep archival footage of everything, staffers have told me previously. As a result, there's no universal standard for how hearings are streamed or archived. The Science Committee uses a content delivery platform powered by Akamai.

GO

Komen's Planned Parenthood Decision Raising Eyebrows Online

Online campaigns have begun to organize in response to news that the breast cancer group Susan G. Komen for the Cure would be cutting its financing to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening and education programs. According to the news reports, Komen says the decision is not in response to pressure from anti-abortion groups, as Planned Parenthood alleges. Rather, a spokesperson told the A.P., the main factor is a new rule adopted by Komen that prohibits grants to organizations being investigated by local, state or federal authorities. Currently, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) is looking in to how Planned Parenthood spends and reports its money. "Susan D. Komen" has been trending on Google since yesterday. GO

More