Since bumper stickers and yard signs provide a fairly inexpensive alternative to television or radio advertising, most campaigns are willing to give away campaign decor for free. We’ve compiled a handy list of ten online campaigns— most of which are on the ballot today—that will send you free bumper stickers (and sometimes yard signs!) with their names on them in exchange for a name, an address, and a phone number. If you don’t mind clicking your email spam button a few extra times in exchange for campaign paraphernalia, follow me!

Blanche Lincoln (Democrat, Arkansas Senate)
Like many centrists, Blanche Lincoln seems to be perennially on the list of vulnerable incumbents, especially during this season when anti-incumbency fervor, especially against Democrats, has taken the nation by storm. She is specifically giving away “Lincoln Ag Team” (she chairs the Senate Agricultural Committee) stickers to supporters in exchange for contact information at the above link.

Gilbert Baker (Republican, Arkansas Senate)
“Common sense conservative” Gilbert Baker is not running against Blanche Lincoln yet, and may not get to, but he’ll give you a bumper sticker and a yard sign in exchange for your support (in the form of contact information). Notice that “I want to receive emails from the Baker for U.S. Senate, 2010 campaign” is selected, but “yard sign” and “bumper sticker” are not. Reverse this and receive two free gifts!

Joe Sestak (Democrat, Pennsylvania Senate)
Joe Sestak is giving incumbent recently-converted Democrat Arlen Specter a run for his money, and the Democratic Pennsylvania primary is quickly becoming the most-watched race of the week. Sestak did a pretty good job of hiding his freebies, actually putting the bumper stickers on a completely separate website, but we found them for you! And unlike most campaign sites, Sestak does not ask for any volunteer work in return.

Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky Senate
You’d think the libertarian Paul, of all people, would be against free stuff, but you can get free yard signs and bumper stickers from the Tea Party favorite, too! He makes you work for it, though: click on the “Volunteer” tab on his home page, and you’ll see one of the options is “send me a bumper sticker.” Yes, getting a free bumper sticker counts as “volunteering.”

Chad Causey (Democrat, Arkansas District 1)
The son of small business owners, Causey began is political career working with Congressman Marion Berry (not to be confused with legendary DC pol Marion Barry). Aside from a quick free bumper sticker application, Causey also has a fairly easy application to hire him to speak at local events!

NEXT PAGE: Five More Election Day Freebies, Including A Special Two-for-One Deal!

Blumenauer’s timeline detailing how one became the other — with the powerful helping hand of Sarah Palin– is fascinating in a number of regards, but specifically because Palin is once again about to be handed a very large microphone. Blumenauer notes that in the all-night health care bill mark-up session of July 16 that “nowhere was there a single proposal to change the end-of-life language, nor a word spoken in opposition. Not a single word.” Enter Betsy McCaughey and Sarah Palin, and a “vicious news cycle” where “lies take on lives of their own on Web sites, blogs and e-mail chains and go viral in seconds.” In this last regard Blumenauer had less than kind words for the MSM:

The news media was a particular culprit in this drama. This was not just Fox News; seemingly all the national news organizations monitored any meetings they could find between lawmakers and constituents, looking for flare-ups, for YouTube moments. The meetings that involved thoughtful exchanges or even support for the proposals would never find their way on air; coverage was given only to the most outrageous behavior, furthering distorting the true picture.
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It didn’t matter. The “death panel” episode shows how the news media, after aiding and abetting falsehood, were unable to perform their traditional role of reporting the facts. By lavishing uncritical attention on the most exaggerated claims and extreme behavior, they unleashed something that the truth could not dispel.

The question remain whether the news media will be able to perform its “traditional role of reporting the facts” going forward — between Palin’s book and the health care bill/Stupak amendment making its way through the Senate it may be a challenge. When everyone in the media is struggling to stay afloat, the call of a splashy headline is sometimes hard to resist.

Related: BBC’s Rome Hartman is more optimistic and thinks the viewing public won’t be fooled again: “People are smart enough to know shamelessness when they see it.” But what if that’s all they see?

Update: a Democratic Representative’s office responds — see end of post.

From the New York Times’ Prescriptions Blog:

Mr. Obama, during his private pep talk to Democrats, recognized Mr. Owens election and then posed a question to the other lawmakers. According to Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, who supports the health care bill, the president asked, “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit” Democratic voters “and it will encourage the extremists.” (emphasis added)

The quote should be taken with a few large grains of salt before one draws any conclusions about President Obama: it is, after all, “according to Representative Earl Blumenauer,” and could be a paraphrase rather than a direct quote.

Still, the quote’s emergence is a sign of the powerful information-sifting capabilities of the social web: even though the offending word “teabag” appeared two thirds of the way into a wonky post on a fairly obscure NYT blog, it’s already starting to bubble up on social aggregator sites like Digg and Reddit. This, in turn, highlights the dark side of these sites, which sometimes tend towards sensationalism and a herd mentality: a Digg headline falsely claims that “Obama uses the word ‘teabagger’ to describe the opposition.”

It’s possible that an older fellow like Earl Blumenauer could naively use the phrase ‘teabag’ without realizing its explosive connotations — which is why the question of who said what and who paraphrased what is so crucial.

It’s a question worth asking whether the New York Times deliberately buried the lede on this one, out of genteelness or whatever other motivation. By now, anyone who has been seriously following the tea party movement should know that a lot of people out there are greatly offended by the phrases “teabag” and “teabagger,” given their sexual connotations (cf. Urban Dictionary).

Yes, Obama’s healthcare pitch to lawmakers is important to the public debate, but in today’s political climate, the possibility that Obama used the word “teabag” in conversation with Democratic lawmakers is a story of its own, not a noted-in-the-third-paragraph-with-no-followup story. At the same time, it’s possible that an older fellow like Earl Blumenauer could naively use the phrase ‘teabag’ without realizing its explosive connotations — which is why the question of who said what and who paraphrased what is so crucial.

Update: Representative Blumenauer’s communications director tells Mediaite that Blumenauer was paraphrasing. “Congressman Blumenauer was simply summarizing in his own words the President’s remarks following the caucus meeting,” she said in an email.