Politics!
Obama Will Announce His Running Mate By Text Message
Sometime between now and the convention, Barack Obama, just like the cool kid in study hall, will surreptitiously send a text message announcing his pick for vice president.
A brilliant idea for the progressive candidate. Not only will it reduce the cost of increasing voter turnout, but it allows Obama to develop powerful one-to-one messaging with potential voters.
Leveraging the mobile phone, an intensely personal device, will enable Obama to pull himself inside our social spheres and make us feel connected to him, as if we have a personal relationship with the candidate.
If anything this has been Obama strength as a campaigner to make us feel like he is talking directly to us during his stump speeches. Mobile is the perfect medium to take it to the next step.
I hope it works… not just as a mobile guy, but for the rebuilding of the country.
[Wednesday]’s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.
Mark Klein AT&T Whistleblower
A perfect reason why Obama should be our next President
On Tuesday the conservative evangelical leader Dr. James Dobson attacked Barack Obama for his ‘Call to Renewal’ speech he gave two years ago about religion and politics.
The the speech is truly inspiring and shows that the Democratic candidate from Illinois truly understands that the highest office is about representing all the people, not just the most vocal zealots:
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason.
Just by prompting the attack Dobson proves Obama’s two year old point through wild interpretation of past statements and the Bible itself. Dobson tries to pick and choose the parts of the Bible he thinks Obama is offending… poorly.
In my mind Obama already won the fight two years ago. From the same address:
And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.
Keith Olbermann tells Bush to ‘shut the hell up’
An incredibly painful clip, but a great illustration of how the PR concept of talking points to induce argumentum ad nauseam works in modern politics.
The interviewee Kevin James has no idea what he is talking about, but sticks to his talking points, with little fear that he will be asked to back up his remarks. Chris Matthews does an excellent job of forcing his guest to explain his comments to ensure that James isn’t making a false accusation. James just repeats his talking points over and over again, not explaining his meaning.
Matthews does a great sticking on the issue until his guest is either able to back up his claim or prove his own ignorance, all of which while not losing his cool.
And in case you are wondering, this current and historical events they were “discussing.”
via merlin
The Democratic Race summarized in 7 Minutes!
Hacking Democracy
Watched a very interesting HBO Documentary on voting machines this weekend. The film goes to show how a Diebold memory card that stores the votes, is easily hacked, then used in a mock election to steer the results.
States are paying out millions to these voting machines used in 80% of all elections in the country. The documentary clearly shows how many of these machines are very easy to tamper with at both the machine and software level.
Um… am I crazy or is that VB Script being used to determine who our president is?
Bush is now more unpopular than Nixon
CNN reports that President Bush is now the most unpopular president in modern American history, even more unpopular than Nixon right before he resigned.
“No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president’s disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark,” said Keating Holland, CNN’s polling director.
Only 28% of American’s approve of the Bush presidency, ironically the same amount of folks that still support the war in Iraq.
CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider says “Support for the war, the assessment of the economy and approval of Mr. Bush are all about the same—bad”
Exxon Mobil reports $11,000,000,000.00 in quarterly profits
17 percent higher from a year ago. Revenue went from $87.22 billion to $116.85 billion. Second largest U.S. quarterly profit EVER.
I just don’t understand why more people aren’t upset… or down right pissed off about this.
It’s one thing for the wealthy to have tax advantages, I can understand that people let it slide. But high oil prices mean that the poor and middle-class are making a conscious choice to hand over their money to some of the wealthiest people on the planet.
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