Archive: Year: 2008

I'm pleased to have played a small part in helping our friends at the Sunlight Foundation pull togetherthis nifty piece of 3-D (Dynamic, Data-Driven) journalism on the Wall Street bailout: a Google Motion Chart built on top of data from the nonpartisan, invaluable Center for Responsive Politics that lets you see just how big the big money from FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) has grown in the last 20 years, and who gets it. If you play with the chart by mousing around with it, you can see how each sector (represented by a bubble) has invested in politicians over the years. Two interesting observations: note how between 1996 and 2000, the money from FIRE exploded just as the industry...

We're not sure if there's going to be a presidential debate tomorrow night or not, but either way it can't hurt to highlight some of the ways viewers can participate in advance or during the actual event: 1. MySpace is presenting "MyDebates: The Official Online Companion to the 2008 Presidential Debates," in conjunction with the Commission on Presidential Debates which, it must be noted, is a private corporation set up by the two major parties to control the fall debates. While the actual input via MySpace to the actual debate will be minimal (starting today you can email in proposed questions for moderator Tom Brokaw to possibly use at the October 7 "town-hall" style debate), MySpace is making online lemonade from...

Building on yesterday's post about the scattered but telling signs of public opposition to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's $700 billion Wall Street bailout proposal, here's an update on what's been bubbling today. First, and most telling, is the entry of an infamous Internet meme, the FAIL sign, into this morning's nationally televised congressional testimony by Paulson and Fed chair Ben Bernacke. This picture, familiar to any of the millions of readers of the FAIL blog, should go down as an icon of our time, the moment when a user-generated online joke became a political protest slogan. You can expect to see that one word, FAIL, at lots of street protests this Thursday. That's the second big thing bubbling up online. Activists are...

The other day, I got an email from the McCain-Palin campaign urging me to sign up and get involved. "Take a Few Minutes to elect the McCain-Palin Ticket" it read. As it is my practice to join in all these efforts in order to better understand how the campaigns are using the web, I clicked the link and after filling out some basic info (name, address, etc), was offered the option of giving some further demographic info to join in various "coalitions" being organized in support of his candidacy. The sign-up section looked like this: Now, most of the demographic or interest groups listed make sense if you're planning to do some targeted work with campaign volunteers. "Americans of Faith", "Asian...

The American web is buzzing with activity around Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's proposed $700 billion bailout bill, a test if there ever was one of the new balance of power in the digital age. On one side, we have the most powerful and well-financed sector of the economy pushing for urgent and sweeping action. On the other side, we have a bunch of disorganized minorities ranging from anti-Big Government and taxpayer groups on the Right, open government advocates in the Center and progressive and labor groups on the Left, each for their own reasons starting to question Paulson's proposal. Will Congress pass a "clean" bill, one that gives Treasury near-dictatorial powers to buy up distressed assets with taxpayer funds, bailing...

It appears that someone has hacked into one or more of Sarah Palin's personal email accounts on Yahoo! and published some of the contents on the web. According to an entry on Wikileaks: Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th of September (EST) activists loosely affiliated with the group 'anonymous' gained access to U.S. Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account gov.palin@yahoo.com and passed information to Wikileaks. Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to conduct government business and in the process avoid transparency laws. The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin's inbox, two example emails, address book and a couple of family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account...

Two current examples of how bloggers are not just commenting on the political news of the day, but actually making it: Al Giordano and Bill Conroy of NarcoNews were the first to report that one of Sarah Palin's first acts upon becoming Governor of Alaska was to equip the governor's mansion with a tanning bed. How did they come up with this fact, which has been confirmed by Alaskan officials? Giordano explained on his blog: "The investigation began as the result of a comment posted here by a reader (you know who you are; uncloak if you like and share the credit!), a comment I didn't approve because it made a rather fantastic claim: that one of the first things Governor...

On August 30, 2006, Senator John McCain co-signed a letter to "Ms. Sarah H. Palin" of 245 West 5th Avenue #28, Anchorage, AK, 99501. He, along with his co-signers former Governor Michael Dukakis, former US Rep. Bill Frenzel, and former US Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, were acting in their role as members of the board of Project Vote Smart, a nonpartisan citizen group. They were asking Palin, who was then one of several candidates for Governor of Alaska, to agree to take the "National Political Awareness Test" and tell citizens her positions on issues of concern to voters in her state. They noted: Modern day political candidates often heed the destructive advice of political parties and consultants who tell them not to...

This video of Ralph Nader in a soliloquy with a parrot is just too good to pass up. It was filmed in Salt Lake City, UT, while Nader was visiting Rocky Anderson, the city's former Mayor. Nader discusses the lack of coverage of his campaign, addressing the parrot by its name, Cardozo. He also ponders dressing as a panda to get attention. The plaintive soundtrack completes the picture, making this video as good as a Saturday Night Live parody. Hilariously, the Nader campaign posted this video as a response to one of a person dressed in a bear suit walking the streets of Galveston, TX, as Hurricane Ike approaches. That video has more than 500,000 views. This one, not so...

Friday, the Obama campaign released a new ad mocking John McCain for being so "out of touch" with current realities that "he admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail." It seems as though a meme that started gaining traction back in June at the Personal Democracy Forum plenary, where Edwards blogger Tracy Russo lambasted McCain deputy internet director Mark Soohoo for defending McCain's admitted internet illiteracy, has now been embraced by Obama directly as a way to raise doubts about his rival's fitness for the White House. Unfortunately, the language of the ad oversimplifies the issue (though it's hardly as big a distortion of the truth as McCain's recent attack ads). In fairness, McCain...