Baird slammed in robo-call

Early this evening my message machine recorded a robo-call regarding Brian Baird's views on Iraq, encouraging people to attend his town hall meeting in Vancouver tomorrow night. To be clear, I live in Baird's district, WA-03.

The caller ID simply read all zeros with "out of area." Since the call did not identify who is sponsoring the calls, I have no idea who is behind them.

I've transcribed the call. Obviously paragraph breaks are mine, intended for readability.

I'm an Iraq vet, and like many of you, I am a long time supporter of your Congressman, Brian Baird. One of the reasons I have supported him in the past has been his opposition to the war in Iraq, but I was completely disappointed in Congressman Baird when he returned from a tightly scripted trip to Iraq and announced that he has decided to oppose Democratic proposals to begin the withdrawal of our troops from that religious civil war.

The so called surge has been a complete failure. The surge was supposed to provide more security to make space for political reconciliation, but this has been the bloodiest summer in Iraq since the beginning of the war, and there is no political reconciliation in sight.

Frankly, someone with as much education as Congressman Baird should be ashamed at allowing himself to fall for the spin from the White House PR machine. If you're as angry as I am at Congressman Baird, attend his town meeting in Vancouver on Monday night at 7 p.m. at Fort Vancouver High School, 5700 E. 18th St. Let him know we expect him to stand by the commitment he made during the last election to end the war in Iraq.

Several things come to mind. I'm in favor of banning political robo-calls, and I certainly hate anonymous calls, which this one is. That being said, a friend tells me she got a Baird office robo-call about the town hall, so at least in this instance, it's a somewhat level playing field. Your guess is as good as mine about who would pay for robo-calls into the district over a town hall. Maybe if I move I will figure it all out, on the QT. Pass the decoder rings and the popcorn.

As for the substance of the call, it hit a little below the belt with the dig at Baird over his education, but overall I'm hard pressed to find more fault than that. Baird has not relented in pursuing his new-found revelation in the traditional and right-wing media, so it's not exactly shocking folks would move to strike back.

And you thought August was a slow month.